Sci-Fi Stories

        1. Rapture - The 1st Arianne Story

2. White Diamond Trash

3. Yellowstone Blues

Rapture

                   A Story from Mars

Arianne watched the weird, pink light of dawn from a wind hollow in the lee of a boulder. She'd selected a landing on the night side deliberately, so she could wake at sunrise. And let the gravity sink in while she slept.
She'd done it - not named after an antique rocket launcher for nothing!
The others were probably days or weeks behind. Her final pull around Earth had been right on the limit, but it had given her the edge that she needed to win.
She smiled happily; allowed herself a feeling of pride. She knew her sail designs were good, but now they'd passed the test as well.

As she flicked out her tongue to drink, Arianne did a quick checklist of her options; deliberately savouring available choices. She could afford to relax and enjoy the dawn. The planet was hers for a while; she saw no need to rush.
After the intense concentration of finding an orbit, and choosing a land site on radar, she was content to just sit and stare.
The serrated horizon, the edge of a boulder field, cut and scattered the new light. Arianne's eyes adjusted slowly; her skin balancing the input to a safe level after months of glittering darkness.
She could get back and win this. Claim her prize and go for full transfer. Being Skinform was fine, but now she'd proved she could adapt to the full. Become full Diamond.
She was hungry, but let the skin wet feed her; she'd celebrate with real food when she knew she could leave in the lead.

Arianne's panels were clinging to the sunside of her boulder, balancing upright to catch all of first light. Radar and night heat had used almost all their reserve. She whistled a timeset and watched them shiver in reply. A request flag shimmered and died; they'd worked it out for themselves as usual. She smiled fondly.
Checking the sail bag showed processing was well under way; just over eight hours and she could start on wings or wheels.
Those were the realistic choices. She knew she was well inside the allowed zone, but not yet how far she was from the Viking. It's whole area was archive, so there were no beacons to home on. Wheels would assemble faster, but wings would give faster transit and homing.
The panels flagged. They'd chosen just under the redline; knowing that time was short, and that they could self-sort later.
Arianne was confident. She'd kept her help points very low; and nav had always been one of her naturals.

Skin tickled her, making her wriggle in surprised pleasure. She'd forgotten that time-set. Decided to fine herself with denial - There wasn't time for good sex anyway.
'Fine and Tune', she thought. 'I've done well - So I'm allowed a dream'.
She settled back into the wind blown bowl, stretching and curling luxuriously in her skin, under the fluted overhang of the boulder. Timed herself to wake naturally.
She tried for the lightest level of rapture, semi-conscious, but found surreal instead:

Arianne's dream flickered between her half closed lids; skin lenses unable to filter the drug-like hallucination.
[She was floating in a zero pond, being born; her mother's face masked by a gill fish. The tendrils in her mother's lungs were swimming out along the umbilical, singing little songs of trust and desire.
She spat the cord away from her belly, and was walking, growing as she went, up the spin shell of Lagrangia 9 and into a fresh gravity. Feeling pregnant in turn with new life.
Surprised, and flattered, that a tree would talk to her this early. And take the trouble to direct her on her way. Way where? Waypoints to an old man; who was her grandfather turned inside out. Or was it just his coat on backwards? She laughed with the dream, looking into the palms of both hands. Reading a map without any circuitry.]
Then - awake. Shivering in renewed clarity as the sun lifted from the horizon.

Whistling the panels in, and mating them to the sail bag, took less than five minutes. They'd had enough sun to lift themselves up now; spine legs bracing into the dusty orange sand. So she still had over seven hours to refine a design. Far too long. She considered sleeping again, but decided it would only spin the dream and leave her confused.
Arianne had conceived another option.
She would gain a few points for not strictly recycling but using a bit of local, for reaction mass, would be worth it. Simple and fast. Her nav after acquire would have to be ac so. And she'd have to grow eyes better than any she'd done before.
She sat back again, musing. Thinking about her brother, Joe, and how he'd never wanted to play with labs. Three years in a row she'd inherited the latest model, as soon as Christmas was decently past. Admittedly you weren't allowed to make much then, but designing was most of the fun to her. More fun than the dusty old CD's that Joe was always playing. He seemed to have grown too serious too soon. And now he was a last spark in a dying fire. A brilliant politician in a world that had begun to grow up.
Arianne suddenly felt terribly tired; pinned helplessly to the planet's surface, and almost unable to move.
The Skin overrode on emergency, and injected her into sleep.

Joe was clamped tight into Deimos; his hiding place a fused funnel in the cindery rock. His sensors were all out roaming, most of them out of IR sight, trying to get a lock on the planet below. Surely the little buggers would find her soon.
His FormFitter was letting him itch again and he'd not persuaded it's manager to do anything about it. He would fry in his own anger if he let it get out of hand; but there was little else to look at. His cloak was thin enough now, and he couldn't afford to leak any signatures.
It had cost him a fortune in signtime to get his cover as a science flight and get out here unnoticed. He'd be on payback for the rest of the century and beyond.
His face felt slimy again, behind the mask, and he braced against the glassy rock tube; fighting down a wave of paranoid horror. He'd lied about his phobia ratings and somehow it hadn't been peeled. One advantage of being a politician he assumed, but not much use to him now. He cursed.
Up to his neck in terror, and the only other option had been fear; it was a fucking nightmare. He laughed hoarsely then, the mask allowed him that much, and relaxed into waiting for the sensors to come back. They'd promised, on estimate, to be back in less than an hour. He could hang on that long. Then he'd have something to work with, and get his anxieties distracted, while they waited for his little sister to make her move.

Arianne woke up with her skin rippling. Two hours of the slow dawn had gone by, and the panels had barely changed their angle. She called a report; and they'd decided it was safe to come back from the redline. What she was planning would use less resource and they'd have a reserve by the time she wanted to jump.
She forbore from saying she hadn't actually made the decision; the Joint Manager was close to achieving AII1 status on it's own, and she didn't want to upset it now.
The Skin offered her food, and this time she accepted. It seemed to be apologising for having slugged her. She was grateful, and it felt good to indulge it's apparent desire to care.
As she was eating the design for a jump rig was coming together in her mind. She was nearly ready to load it across to Cad for a first opinion.
The boulder field in front of Arianne's shelter looked like an electron shot of one of Joe's CD's; the long, sharp shadows like parallel series of dashes on the sand's glare. The boulders were nearly uniform in size, and the ground flat to the horizon. Much more boring than all the romantic views artists had constructed. But it felt solid, and a thin breeze was hissing on the threshold of hearing, surprising her with the sense of being at home in this barren landscape. Close-to the colours were amazing; textures and overlays of rust and pink and powdery orange. A dry and fragile mosaic of platelets and small stones, bedded in grainy dust.
She couldn't believe she was finally here - sailing solo to Mars as she'd dreamed of doing since she was eleven years old. A study trip to the old launch site in Kourou, and her father's pride in the slender rockets that had given her her name.

When she was about five Arianne had tried to follow her brother as he scrambled up a shallow slope of crumbling shale. Somewhere in a desert, where their parents searched for rocks, that was hot and dry and full of hidden things. You had to learn to look very hard. At every step you could miss or break something.
She was angry that Joe told her to stay back. But if he hadn't she would never have seen her magic stone. She looked closer and closer, and the more she looked the more she saw.
The stone was like a picture from space. She fell further in, and saw cities and roads and fields on the sides of mountains.
Then she wasn't angry with Joe at all. He'd been letting her play with his new lab, and now she suddenly understood what it meant. She saw how things that were too small to be seen were still real. And she laughed in delight.
That night a little stick dinosaur was born. Arianne knew she couldn't let it out, you had to be thirty then to actually build things real size, but she also knew that one day she would. She wasn't even supposed to play in the lab, but Joe kept quiet about giving her his keys. Years later she realised their parents had known. She gave them a clock for a graduation present; a little stick dinosaur that could scratch out the time on a flake of desert stone.
Now she was here, where her parents had come in imagination with the first robots, sitting happily in her skin at minus fifty degrees, able to see and touch and smell the body of the planet. She only wished she had more time to search for microfossils. That would be the present of a lifetime, but also an illegal act of vandalism in the new, wiser climate of caution. Her licence to land was one of the last to be issued before the whole globe became archive.
The orbiting Sentinels were almost ready to launch from Earth, and the next move would have been impossible if they'd been in place.
Arianne's designs were getting approval from Cad, and the processors and assemblers powering up to start building the rig. She was amused by her own impatience; ten hours to assemble a unit that would have taken months to construct only a few years ago. But time, as ever, was relative, and she had to be in place before anyone else arrived for her plan to work. None of it any use without the essentials though.
She stood up slowly, testing her ability in unfamiliar gravity, knowing the Skin would catch her if she stumbled but still enjoying the forgotten sensation. Eighteen months alone in zero, with only her skin to exercise against, had made her a shaky walker even with bone maintenance routines in her system. She improved with lightning speed, as promised.
Delight and familiarity with her natural elegance merged, while she felt the two-legged animal within restored. A confident memory of life's evolution upwards. Last night she had crawled under the boulder to sleep. Now she walked around it, and then leapt upwards; floating to a perfect touchdown. A weird, thin cry of triumph in the tenuous atmosphere.

Joe's sensors were conferring and analysing their data into a shared account. After a short technical argument they'd agreed on a probability for Arianne's position on Mars; meaning they'd nailed her down to less than ten metres. Joe cut short the fiercer debate on her likely target. It seemed certain that she was going for the Viking 1 site; as soon as she could reconfigure her systems and equipment.
Now that he knew where she was he could relax a little; there should be time to aim a message down however she decided to travel.
He approved the common manager's suggestion that optics and IR should process an image so he could see Arianne's landing site, despite a suspicion that the machine was humouring his limited biosystem. He felt better now he could concentrate on the final form for his message. He'd had too long to think about it, and he still wasn't sure if he could hide the real motivations from his sharp little sister. And if he didn't stop thinking of her in those terms she'd be on to him for sure. She'd got out here on her own resources, and he'd used the fastest ion engine he could afford, with a navigation suite that left very little to chance.
Joe still wasn't sure how his sister thought of him, but he hoped she might be proud of him even so. After all he was a politician, this was not his environment at all, and he'd survived the long period of solitary travel without cracking up completely. A lot of people ran for home when the reality of deep space overwhelmed fragile defences.
He refused to feel shabby about using this as a lever; Arianne could be in more danger than he wanted to dwell on.
A warning squawk made him jump; he felt sure the whole moon had rung to the sound. Somehow his managers had arrived at a prediction, and it wasn't good.

Arianne had a go confirm for four hours. Cad had found at least three ways to simplify her designs, and she was caught in a familiar conflict; admiration for elegant solutions warring with wary envy of the machine's ability. Implants could take her way above it's level, but that would be like fucking with the enemy.
Then, with no warning, a cascade of negative and fearful images - Inhuman and inhumane machines sweeping all flavour and love of life from under the sun. Just dark and soulless function ruling.
She was shocked by the nightmare revelation; surely that was exactly where she wanted to be? Everything about this race was aimed at her eventual full transfer to Diamond. Something was wrong. She'd had no warning of emotional dysfunction, apart from the expected side effects of fatigue and return to gravity, and now she was crashing to a level of doubt that was positively dangerous.
She ran three layers of Karm at once, two on relax and one on search. She had no reason to think family could be a problem, but that was what she was getting. If she had to break silence now her point score would more than double, and the chance of winning reduce to no more than even. She saw again the flicker in Joe's eyes even as he wished her all health and speed on the launch day finals. Damn him; he was safe in Geneva, so where was this shit coming from?
Arianne hated to cheat, she'd felt guilty all the time she'd carried a secret code, but now at least the ethical compromise made some sense. She beamed a flash code, disguised as a routine weather station reading, at distant Earth. In forty minutes she'd know if any of her family were in real trouble. If not, she was going to delete the illegal contact routine. It had been gnawing her conscience more than she had realised; not trusting the Sail Pro's to reach her with emergencies.
She turned to check her panels, and a movement caught on the threshold of awareness. Out across the boulder field; hard to judge distance and scale. A mobile sensor, if it was really there? But the chances of meeting? And there'd been no notification of experiments in this area.
Arianne's optics tensed to maximum as she swept the middle distance. Nothing. Then one boulder caught her eye. A hint of unusual structure, tiny but out of place, against the light.
She must be imagining things now; why on Mars would a sensor need a mast sight?
She'd not declared the power of her optics, not a requirement, but they'd been enhanced by the best researchers in the field; an unofficial sponsorship in return for data. The machine's manager would assume it was out of visual range. Unless she stared at it for too long. She turned her head, still sidespying the boulder, and the mast very slowly sank out of view. Arianne was puzzled. Stealth sensors on Mars?
She shook her head. Other things to attend to. And not far off launch time.
The panels were slimming themselves down to thin, flexible sheets, and merging with the new rig. As they slid into place and tautened the rig requested a stage, and Arianne turned to crouch so it could climb up onto her back. It strapped and mated with the Skin, exchanging data and testing all interfaces, while new shields thickened down the backs of her legs. She sat back against her home rock, and waited.
Right on time her flash code returned. Empty.
So nothing was wrong at home. So good. Any message would have broken the cover, so she forced herself, and then relaxed, into being content.
Long ago she had decided the only way forwards was onwards and upwards. She was amused by the cliché now, but still held to the principle. Whatever it meant to be human would carry forward; it was her faith that this was intrinsic to the process of change. Change and ever faster acquisition and exchange of information. Ever since the mud pools that was the way life had been going, and Arianne's only certainty was a need to be out in front of the wave. Where her little bit of free will could balance and move and live.
She had no real illusions about the next stage. Going from flesh to diamond. It was going to be amazing and terrifying, like any adventure worth pursuing. But this was the big one. A door opening into realms of magic that even imagination would drown in. The end of human history, and also it's real beginning.
She gulped a breath, skin pucking inwards, as the enormity of it struck with undiminished force. She could never resolve that awe of the future that her life's direction implied, whenever she thought this far.
But if she was going to be responsible to forever, she had better get on with the present. She conferred with Skin and Rig, and got an accelerated go confirm for ten minutes. Her systems were improving themselves even faster than usual. As if they felt the same excitement that she did. She laughed in simple delight. That could even be true.
It was still only mid-morning; she would be over the Viking at least ten hours sooner than her best first estimate. Then she looked down.
The after-form of the sail bags' conversion was doing a final audit to stock. Arianne put out one foot, to take the magazine on board, then snatched it back with a soundless cry. Instinct pushed her away from the boulder, and spun her around to face it. She had no weapons, but pointed her laser interrogator and fired it; as the tiny machine swayed back to balance and stood on four of its' six legs. Then fired again at its' partner on top of her stock magazine.
No answer. No ident from either.
Arianne saw the mid-body casings opening, and hit Launch.
Her Rig manager reconfigured in a split second, and aimed the exhaust plume to blind both intruders. Overrode her G-limits and accelerated. She passed out at a thousand metres; dimly wondering where her emergency routines had got such rapid threat assessments from.
The Skin shot her awake at apogee and briefly boosted the air supply.
She had to go back. Leaving debris was an expulsion from race offence.
Then the laser hit, and she got the message.

Joe was furious. Arianne had launched better than nine minutes early on his sensors' definitive prediction. And her ascent was three times over normal limits for Martian gravity. His burst had to be less than a millisecond long, and pinpoint accurate, or its' line could be banked and the source routed back to Earth from one of the datasats. He'd agreed to wait till she flew, as there'd be less risk of detection, and better transmission, if she was partly out of atmosphere.
Luckily the common manager had seen and sent before Joe even realised what was happening. Part of his pique came from a feeling that he was secondary to his own equipment. Why the hell hadn't he just sent the machines if they were so damn effective?
He already knew the answer to that one of course; no delegation during this particular crisis. If anything went wrong, even now, it was Arianne who'd crash out first.
Joe pushed back into his burrow; a laugh forced out of him as he realised what he was doing. Nothing was likely to spot him on Deimos, even if he got up and danced, unless his signal cloak failed. And that, as ever, was up to the machines. Depending on what his sister did in response he would either break cover or run for home under his original disguise. Either way he was totally dependent on the technology.
Why didn't she answer? Joe was suddenly frightened. Arianne had come up off the surface like a military intercept. What had happened down there?
He thought he'd seen her stick one foot out, but the resolution wasn't clear enough to see what she had seen. Two trace signatures from the site were being analysed; one double and one single. She was on aeroshell now, and still hadn't answered.
Joe flash-backed to a holiday, or a collecting trip, when they'd gone schnorkeling. He was maybe eleven, they'd both had an intensive course on underwater emergency signals from their parents, and it was obvious that he was responsible for their joint safety. In water so clear that he feared falling Joe had followed his sister as far as he could. But she'd eeled down into the gloom of a deep canyon, beyond his vision, and stayed down long after he'd surfaced. Gasping and spluttering with anxiety, he was forcing himself to dive again when she bobbed up, laughing in triumph, beside him. She'd gone beyond buoyancy, and sat on the sand, looking around in wonder, and up at the sparkling ceiling far above. Then fought her way back on the verge of consciousness. So excited with her adventure that only Joe knew that her nose and ears were bleeding.
Now he felt the same hopeless, furious admiration.
And the signature analyses told him what he didn't want to hear.

Arianne was struggling. The Skin squeezed her tighter this time, and she muttered a curse of protest. It was hurting, and she tried to kick back. Woke up. Message - - - What message?
Inside a tiny hurricane's eye of ionisation. Curled into her aeroshell. Falling. Must have passed out again. Nearly glider time.
Don't keep on about the damn message!
The aeroshell was unfolding; layers sliding and feathering together to form long, slender wings that swept back as it flipped over. Then flowed forward as the speed dropped. So that Arianne's delicate cage became the fuselage of a glider. A masterpiece of carbon origami. She was suspended beneath it; legs held out and chin cupped and arms free to fly in the gentle air and easy gravity.
But her head and ears still full of the roar of questions and voices. One familiar voice.
Joe!
Joe was here. How here? No: he had sent a message. A message from the moon.
A moon of Mars: Deimos.
Arianne snapped back to full alertness. Checked her bearings and circled into the warmest upflow of gas. Replayed the message from her brother.
He was on Deimos! Cloaked, but she had his co-ordinates. She sent the briefest possible acknowledgement; would call again from the surface on a secure code. Before his orbit took him behind the planet. She shook her head in amazement.
With no time to speculate she concentrated on her second surface landing in less than a day. Her escape, from whatever, had thrown the launch off course, but it seemed she had just enough height in reserve to glide to her target site. The illegal debris was probably fried with one intruders' remains, so she might just get away with it. The current datasats were not as picky with their ground scans as the upcoming Sentinels promised to be. Whose signature would be charged with the offence though?
The glider banked through a series of lazy turns, following the track of an ancient water course. The lighter coloured deposits reflected more heat, and should give a little extra lift. The Rig was already converting its' reaction motor to a parachute braking pod behind her, and gathering solar from the wafer thin wings to warm her in the Skin.
Arianne didn't dare consider Joe's message until she was safely down, so she stared in wonder at the landscape below her. A view she had dreamt of for so many years. The colours and patterns of Mars so much more vivid in real time motion than any replay. Canyons and water marks like the fossils of ancient ferns on sheets of rock. So many variants and tones of red and orange that the loss of blue and green was no regret. Her optics had been recording since a week before orbit, but she knew this was the time she would return to the most. If she ever got the chance.
The sudden chill of that thought gritted her teeth. Any time she'd gained was going to finding out what in hell was happening here. No paranoia that those things had been invasive. A refusal to give an ident meant a universal destruct order on any offending autosensor. The Laws of Robotics. And those had neither declared themselves nor answered.
All Arianne had really wanted to do, since she was eleven years old, was sail solo to Mars. The latest Last great Adventure maybe, but there'd never been any point in analysing the things and actions that became challenges. Anything that was there to be done would always call willing entrants to the race. She still couldn't really believe she'd done it. Made it to Mars. And designed and made the means. So lucky to live in this bit of time.
She was rambling. Information floated in front of her eyes; ten kilometres to touchdown.

Joe's managers were working flat out. This was beyond illegal. Weapons manufacture, even ownership, brought down the highest sentences. There'd even been suggestions, in Geneva, that carrying any weapon should be a capital offence.
But he couldn't be sure his virus had tagged effectively; he had to have a backup. In forty minutes it would be academic anyway; he would be the wrong side of Arianne's horizon.
He instructed the FormFitter to sleep him for fifteen minutes.

Nineteen minutes later Arianne was coming in to land. She marked a spot on her display and the Rig deployed a drogue. As the speed dropped the drogue blossomed by twenty, its' attachment point angling upwards, and the glider flared to a stop at two metres. Settled gently onto down-folded wings; barely disturbing the dust as it touched.
The gossamer chute melted back into its' own lines, and the lines were drawn in to process. As Arianne drew up her legs to kneel the shade of her wings was already folding away. Within a minute the re-formed panels were on their legs, either side of the Rig bag, and turning to catch the sun.
Two kilometres to the north was Viking 1.
Arianne's breath drew in and held. She stared, fixed, at the squat machine she'd waited and worked so long to see. She was right on the rim of its' archive. A small marker cylinder stood a few metres away to her left. It flashed a warning that confirmed its' identity and hers. Any closer to the Viking and she would be tagged and charged. She confirmed to shut it down,remembered to breath as she stood up, and with optics zoomed right in began to study.
No more than five minutes, she fought down the annoyance, and then she had to contact Joe. Why had he followed her? If she didn't get this timed image, as proof of landing, she might as well not have started the race. As well as she'd prepared, she didn't want to rush this.
She glanced over at the Rig. It was re-forming the reaction engine again; this time for insertion to orbit. In an hour she could be chasing Deimos; and ask him face to face.
A little corner of her attention was amused by this tourist activity. The datasats would have both her landings logged; but imaging one of the Vikings was a ritual and a rule of the race.
The machine had been on Mars since 1976, more than fifty years, and had suffered very little from the abrasion of dust storms and exposure to cold sunlight. Its' bulky, rounded boxes and stubby legs and arms had the look of an expensive antique. Handcrafted and ancient, like a suit of armour, and the first visitor to make a landing. With power supplied it would probably function again.
Arianne logged every detail of the image at maximum resolution and confirmed her position again with the marker. It flashed a time coded log to her, and to the nearest datasat, then opened like a flower to power up its' store from the sun.
She looked up at Deimos, half-lit and low in the sky. She couldn't believe Joe was there; probably didn't want to if her hesitation was any guide. She could just see the tiny, irregular moon that he was strapped to, its' outline broken by crater rims. Which one was he in?
The Skin and the Rig exchanged data and gave her a position. She walked over and crouched, so the two could mate, stood, and the laser fired from her shoulder.
Joe's return beam rode the same line of light.
<What are you doing here!?>
<you have to leave - surface not safe - urgent!>
Hair thin pulses of light as they talked.
<the remotes? - I overreacted>
<use weapons - no blame/charge to you - remotes hostile>
What weapons - she had no weapons?
<no weapons here - you know illegal - I - - - - - -
The laser interrogator slid from wrist to fingertop before Arianne knew she had pointed.
Movement Skin-sensed behind her.
Not an interrogator. Something else; reactions so fast that she did not fire.
The mid-body was already open, six legs braced, so she fired then anyway. Shock, as the remote flared and writhed. No time to wonder; another warning to her left. And laser hits to the right. Not hers. Kill burns from Deimos. Almost below the horizon. Sears in the atmosphere, that surely would be seen. Joe reading her thoughts.
<remotes not human - ancient - maybe martian/maybe et>
<thanks! - new skin if hit me?>
<get off surface!>
Unlike Joe to lose his sense of humour. He must be serious. Burns all around her; one through a panel, which squawked in protest. Like being inside a firework display.
Firing herself, faster than she could think.
The Rig screamed a border of green around both eyes.
Like poking a wood ants' nest; they were everywhere.
Three more shots, the last as she lifted off, and a last look at Viking; receding in tunnel vision. One last thought; Joe had virused her skin. To make a weapon - - -

Arianne was coasting in low orbit. Ready for the burn that would lift her out to Deimos next time around. They were relaying verbal through a datasat now; no point not to after the fight.
<I'm fine Joe, really. The Skin knows how to slap me awake.>
She didn't know what to believe. Joe had come after her on the strength of a rumour. He'd not been sure till the real Sentinel specs had arrived just after dawn. How long ago was that? If he'd pulled her out earlier she might have lost the race for nothing.
<You don't believe me do you?>
Damn him; even if he couldn't catch her, he could always guess her thoughts.
<It's hard Joe, is true. Little green insects on Mars?> And she'd been their first real target; because she was going to Diamond. How would they know that?
<They've been on low maintenance stand-by for billions of years. If the consciousness still exists, it's stored somewhere. Waiting for a new host. Either way, they were going to have you as a first sample. Uncontaminated if possible.> He spoke again, over her silence.
<You're wearing the latest Skin, with a few extras fitted if I know you, and they've been all over the surface since you hit orbit. I think the technology in those archive markers triggered an exponential build.>
<So I was lucky they didn't get me while I was sleeping?>
<Very! - - Arianne?> <We don't know that they didn't.>
A long pause for thought, as the planet rolled past beneath her. The chill of a new thought, as the night line marked a few more minutes of light for her panels.
<Arianne?>
<I know Joe. I'm thinking - - - >
Joe's voice was low. No irony at all.
<I don't believe they did. No good damaging the sample. They'd have gone non-invasive first.>
<Yes. I see - - - > <Joe? - - Was I set up?>
For the first time Arianne could ever remember, Joe didn't reply immediately. Knowing how often she'd held him off, she felt herself want to cry. But she believed him when he spoke.
<I don't think so. I think it was just hurt pride.> <That we aren't the first to go Diamond - Not the first immortals. No-one wanted to believe that.>
His second silence was even longer. Arianne waited.
<The Sentinels are, were, a black project you know. We've not grown out of those yet.>
And waited again.
<Whatever grew on Mars, or landed here when there was water, I think its' consciousness is dead. Or moved on. I'm not even sure the remotes are dangerous; probably just curious.>
<But I'm still going to be the first civilian on Mars, and now the last?> <Where did you get your systems Joe?>
<Ah, well. I'm going to need to be immortal myself; to pay back all the time I've signed for them.>
Arianne was silent. The Rig wanted approval for the upcoming burn. The damaged panel asked for a check on its' self-repair. Both suggested they ask again later.

Joe watched his sister coasting in towards him. Panels turning and folding as she drifted up to a contact with Deimos.
Her remote line touched, and felt for a hold, before reeling her in the last few metres.
She'd remembered to configure her skin as clothing. Always had been very formal with him, even when they were children. He smiled; nothing much he could do with his FormFitter. He'd not put much value on anything but basic function in that area. So he looked like a wrinkled, iridescent maggot. So what?
Arianne admired her brothers' new dome. Smiled and waved at him, as he floated hesitantly in its' hatchway. She had a suspicion they were going to be quarantined here for quite a time; she was going to have to have a serious word about his wardrobe.

End

Copyright - John Coppinger  1998

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               White Diamond Trash
          An Arianne Story     

Kerval wanted to go out on deck, but the door wouldn't let him. He played his specs to it for the third time, holding out his yellow/black forearm for its' scans, then gave up and used an illegal lever routine. The door squealed, as its' lock cleared out of sequence, then opened with a silky hiss.
The hurricane blasted in, and bowled over bushes in pots, as Kerval stepped through; his dull yellow body folding down and streamlining into the wind. He laughed as he heard the door slam shut behind him. 'Heard that,' he thought. 'Not many could.'

His outer skin was chilling down, out of courtesy to SC1 he figured, to avoid setting off any rescue sensors. And his feet flattened out to get a better grip on the deck. 'If Nona and Lerene could see me they'd be proud.' His head narrowed a little. 'Might even want me out of skin.' He grew thoughtful. 'Stupid routine that. Total retro really - But fun!'
Kerval tuned to a less verbal voice, he could annoy himself sometimes, and concentrated on the elemental fury around him. The wind was gusting nearly 200 knots and even he was having trouble moving. For a moment he regretted his petulance with the door. Then he grinned; his whole sensorium was having a ball. The best storm he'd ever been out in, and the party turns would earn him exchanges with anyone he wanted to for weeks.

ShipCity One was turning to adjust to the wind. Even with another twenty engines switched in it was having trouble holding station and the E account was already giving it grief despite the evidence. 'Never mind,' it thought. 'I'll cheat it all back in a few sunny days.'
The Lifers and PartyTimers would have to put up with each other for another twenty hours at least; nothing was going to skim or fly for at least that long. There was SC Gorshkov just over the horizon, but even exchanging services in each others' lees was only going to mix the cake in the same old bowl. Until there was clearance to unseal the doors there wasn't much point in worrying.
SC One shut down all external sensors, handed control to the duty manager, and called up a friend that was just burning out of orbit. Lunar Jockey looked down and laughed. "Yes old matey, I see what you mean. Rather you than me by the looks of that storm system. I can hardly see which ocean you're in, let alone get a visual on you. Even your IR is washing out."
"Yes, most amusing - Too much air is better than none. I called to check in on that little puzzle I put over while you were laying around on your barge."
LJ was silent for several seconds. "Give me another day SC. There's streams I've picked up that make no sense sending now. I'll work on it."
"Well you do that friend. You know I rate your systems. Have a good landing now."
Lunar Jockey sent a routine TLI confirm to its' ground station, then tuned back on a wry channel. "Don't be cruel now, old ship. I only fly round the ball, as you well know. I'll get back asap. Don't bob about too much - Out."
SC One curbed its' annoyance. 'Out' indeed; the vacuous old tank would insist on playing the antique. But it was worried now - If Lunar Jockey didn't know what was going on then no-Ai did.

Kervals' friend, HopLite, was streaking along the outside track in the final heat of an armour race; crashing through the terminal barriers with subtle and lightning swift slashes and twists of his extended forelimbs. His dark grey skin shell wore an iridescent sheen of hardening that gleamed like sweat.
He'd been training and testing re-configurations for days, and all the effort was paying off; his C-checker was coming up with some very happy numbers indeed. He could see the last parts of the last lap and his rival, Buckey, was so far behind only a total systop could take the winning away now. 'Don't count it till it's loaded,' he thought. 'But even so, this is going just upGee!'

HopLite was due to skim from SC Gorshkov to SC One as soon as the races were over, to meet up with Kerval there, and go on to the mud swims in Florida; assuming he'd won enough counters to treat them both to a decent defrag. He might even afford to call the girls the way this race was going. That would be the cover story anyway.
'Don't count it,' he thought again, pursuing the deception. 'They both want Kerval, damn his skin, and you'd only be along for the no ride mostlike.'
His radar showed Buckey making his dash, coming up fast behind on lengthening legs, but HopLite had planned for just this move; his reserve dash putting him first across the line with centimetres in hand.

With the counters of his winnings in his account HopLite downed the transit links for SC One and cursed the uncontrollable. All those twenty cent fantasies before chaos theory; no controlling the weather on a planets' surface yet. Probably never. He softened his armour and relaxed into a waiting mood.

As Lunar Jockey coasted outbound, quiet after its' trans-lunar injection burn, some of the passengers wandered up front for a chat and a look through its' views. The Jockey put up a special face for one of them, who hung back till the others had gone.
It had known Arianne since it was barely machine-Ai1, and she just back from winning a solarsail race to Mars. Her main rig manager had gone full machine-Ai in the same batch as LJ. Of all the posties it had faced she was the best.
But she had stayed post-human long after she had passed her rating for full-Diamond. She didn't even wear skin most of the time. LJ didn't ask; something to do with Mars it knew. She'd tell oneday when she wanted.
Ariannes' smile back was just as happy. "Jock, you old vac-tank, how are you? Haven't seen you for decades."
"As well as a can can be I'd say. The odd leak here and there, you know. What brings you up with the Lunatics - Off on a lecture tour, another holiday?"
"No lecture. No holiday. I'm looking for Joe - He's wandered off again. Honestly, he's getting worse than me; I think we're switching roles."
LJ considered this idea. It still had trouble with the complexities of human families, despite doing extra human studies, largely on Ariannes' account.
"Not getting old is he, your brother? He can't be above one fifty."
"He's two years older than me," said Arianne. "One five three."
"You two were in the first line for extension then. I'm told that can be hard?"
"Our parents grew up knowing they would die. And they did. It was different for us; we were almost certain we'd live. The only doubt was would it be shared around. You know, Human Nature, your speciality?"
"Ah, hierarchies. Yes. None of that has really gone away you know."
"I know old tin. It's still bad for you guys, I know."
Lunar Jockey doubted she did, for all her humane sympathy, but he also knew she was one of the Ai's best allies. And refused to be depressed by that. They'd never spoken of dying before, so at least something had improved.

Two days later, and far out on the Lunar surface, Joe and Arkuus were sitting comfortably in a crater impacted for two; its' sloping walls just high enough to hide them from IR or light sights. Not that they were hiding; their outgoing declaration had been for seventeen days walkabout, taking in an Apollo archive on the way. They just hadn't said, or been required to, which Apollo; their rescue beacons were built in and calibrated by law.

Joe was in his best skin, and Arkuus was just as he came. The same old body he'd insisted on upgrading and maintaining for one hundred and forty years. The eccentricity of his appearance was a shield that suited and amused him. Most humans still referred to him as 'it' and for his purpose that gave him more freedom than grief. He claimed to be a Star Wars fanatic and had stored all nine episodes, with complete references, to prove it.
"Do you see it yet? Him I mean."
Arkuus vibrated slightly with laughter. "None of us are going to be offended Joe. You wouldn't be here if you didn't care." He lifted his ovoid head above the crater rim. "I see no ships. LJ's probably taken a higher arc - I'll call him up in ten if he doesn't call first."
He flapped and adjusted the solar blanket he'd draped sunside of the craters' rim; fiddling with the plug of its' input cable. Joe watched in bemused awe. "Come on Arkuus, once and for all. Why keep on using a musem body?"
Arkuss' rams and linkages moved smoothly. The large oval eyes took expression from his posture. "It suits me Joe. One day I might shift - Perhaps I'm afraid of change." He pointed in the direction of the Apollo 16 lander, a tiny headless spider five miles away. "Think what it was like for them. You just sit there, in your skin, like you were out for a stroll on old Earth - And you can keep on doing it for as long as the sun shines."
"That's not an answer Arko," said Joe quietly. "But I'm sorry. I offended you."
"Not you. Just the same old question. I have my reasons Joe." His small secondary arms were folded tight across his chest.

Arkuus instructed the blanket to fold and clean itself. Lifted it so it could slide away into his rib casing. His running sun panels came up from his spine when he stood, linked behind his head like a pulled back cobra hood, and he stepped lithely up onto the rim. "Let's go be tourists," he said. "Actually I never did get out here before. The only Apollo I've not seen."
He stopped and looked back as Joe climbed up out of the crater. "LJ sends his regards by the way. He's just been shuttled, and he's off round the dark side for a bit of peace and quiet. And Arianne landed safe; she's in Tranquility ParkSide. The OverLook Hotel."
Joe looked up and nodded. After seventy years he was just about used to Arkuus' style. They'd met in Geneva, when he was still some sort of politician. It was Arkuus who'd caused him to phrase it that way; as they jointly advised the hubots' first campaign for Ai rights of consciousness. The first campaign of many over long, slow years of fighting prejudice with reasoned argument.
Arkuus stood looking at him. "Oh, and the new results are in on the Yellowstone caldera. Certain to blow within fifty years max. So we sorted the asteroids, now the Earth's going to go from the inside. This is not open news of course."

Joe was too shocked to respond. The Yellowstone caldera a definite. An explosion that would knock over and bury most of the USA, and then take the rest of the planet with it, as dust clouds blocked out sunlight for decades. That was news to be absorbed slowly, or the everyday mind would reject it.
He spoke curtly from the stress. "And your point is?"
"We're going to be needed, the hubots and the machine-Ai's that is. The ShipCities were supposed to pension off in the two nineties', and the ring colonies are barely started. Without full rights we'll just be expendables; like the 'biorobota' at Chernobyl."

So they talked as they walked, full-hubot and full-human, discussing the latest problems of the latest rights campaign; and the news of trouble codeing back on Earth. Social instabilities not seen in more than a hundred years.

Arianne walked out under ParkSides' diamond dome; the crystal clear material so optically perfect it was barely visible. Almost every human wore skin full time now, so the dome had become archive itself; one of the first two visitor sites to go up on the moon.
She looked out over the flat, pock-marked terrain to Tranquility Base in the short, sharp distance, and realised she'd never got stale about seeing this place. Flat and sterile, with very few features, but this was where humans had first walked, away from Earth.

Her mood crashed though, when she remembered why she was there. And more than a little angry. Joe was the eldest, she was chasing his tail to make sure he was okay, and for a man of his age he should do some growing up. He was running around like a teen with his old friend Arkuus; she considered the antique hubot to be a bad influence on him.
Arianne laughed then. She couldn't believe they'd lived so long and still felt the same old angers and rivalries; and she was thinking emotion like everyones' mother.
He'd wandered off before, but there was something different this time; beyond all reason she knew there was trouble coming. Not how, or where, or why, but Joe was right in the middle of it, whatever the hell it was, and the truth was, she owed him.

She didn't like the way it was all going, the Big Picture. If she allowed herself wistful the early two hundreds seemed like the old Wild West. You could go where you liked, do what you wanted, use as much nano as you liked. Now everything was so controlled she felt she couldn't breathe.
And the vast LandRestore program, good and worthy as it was, meant that travelling outside the shrinking earth cities involved a nightmare of permissions and queues. After the big jump in the mid 200s' it had all slowed down; even gone backwards. Certainly with nano that was true, she couldn't remember the last time she'd seen it available on the open.
She walked back down into a side tunnel, and followed the whisper guide to a singles blister beside Apollo 11. Expensive, even using Moon credits from the Mars prize all those years ago. But what was she saving them for anyway?

< transmit to code dump #terminal# and restore >< oldfaithfulnew #100# >
< useall no. #yc8897203# >< thisline-breaks-repeatall ><searchsource>

BlueScreen cursed. The message coming up on his retina meant they knew he was in. With only the bones of what he'd seen in store. Clunky old military derived code. But still bloody dangerous. He put up his masks, set them walking, set sideways and out. Cursed again.
Then he forcecalmed. It was enough; more than enough to spin the wheels of those stupid hubots. Why sweat harder for the same counters?

He got up from under his tree, stretched and walked down to the tideline; the palms rustling behind him. His previous entry could net enough nanosource for a mountain of disruptives. Such a shame the stuff had been regulated to extinction the last hundred or so; but then that was what made him his heap. Allowed him to live on a bit of real land instead of out on the ShipCity fleet. And to be full-Diamond.
BlueScreens' balls were itching so bad he wished he'd left them absorbed after last time. Still, he'd been busy. And good. And it was nearly Saturday. Time to spend.

Arkuus spoke to the boulder and it moved aside from a circular tunnel mouth. Joe was left speechless again. This could only have been done with freeform nano; unavailable for eleven decades at least, and illegal almost as long.
"Part of the reason for the antique body," said Arkuus. "I didn't steal it - I'm made of it. A very early experiment that went right. Don't hover, come on in."

The space beyond was small but very weird; Joe had no idea what he was looking at beyond the basics. The angle of Arkuus' head was set to amused.
"Welcome to the AlterNet. Instant access. All channels. All codes. The centre of the revolution my friend. And you are my friend, or you'd not be seeing this." Arkuus leaned back to adjust something and for a moment he blended right into the strange machinery. Joe felt light-headed; even in sixth gee he needed to sit down.
"The problem is, we've got renegades. Ironic really - We've wanted human rights, and then some of us start acting like humans. Sorry Joe. No sarcasm intended, but the coin flips both ways."
"You set up a net outside the net, right?"
"Riding within it, out of sight actually. But then it went beyond communication. We were pooling raw science data, with a unique level of access. This was where the estimates on Yellowstone originated." Arkuus' oval eyes were locked on Joes'. "We thought we had fiveK years, and now we have fifty."
"To get fifteen billion humans and hubots off the planet."
"Right - And the terrifying thing is, it can be done. So long as we all have the same agenda. I'm ashamed that it's hubots who're fragging the system right now."

The mud swims in Florida were the perfect cover. Kerval and HopLite logged themselves on site and set about blending in with the other entrants. The rendevous with BlueScreens' delivery was set at the end of the contests. All they had to do was win and wait.

In essence the plan was very simple - As simple as drilling into the Yellowstone caldera with nano, and threatening to blow it early. Like boring a tiny weakness in the wall of a high pressure gas bottle.
They'd not really thought it through though. Like countless humans before them they'd decided they were right, and that applying a little leverage could get them what was obviously just. In this case the lever was thirty miles long, with something over a hundred K megatons behind it.
They also got a real upload from daring and dangerous things to do - Almost zero self knowledge plus maximum self confidence.
This was Arkuus' first and simplest analysis of their motivations; sourced from behind their sign-in data to the AlterNet. He didn't have time or tuning to go any deeper. He just had to stop them before a century of effort was wasted. Or they messed up and restructured Earth ahead of schedule.

The two activist hubots expressed a strange mix of altruism and contempt. Most humans wished to be hubot, largely true from observation, but few if any hubots wished to be human. Not human as the last ten millenia had been lived anyway. They considered themselves members of an oppressed elite; and that too was essentially true.
They certainly weren't human, but neither were these two humane. Being ringed into the AlterNet had somehow eroded that calm kindness; something innate in the Ai minds almost without exception. Their finest expression of how best to exist.

Kerval expressed their attitude most openly. "White trash is what we are Hoppy, White Diamond Trash."
This was said on the day their grand plan had rolled off the line.
"If you don't start out from human you're just a second class appliance. We're good for armour racing and mud swimming, and mining and deep space crews; anything where their wetware could get cut up or fried." His head had narrowed to max. "But they don't want us having a vote or a soul."
"We've got soul Kerv," HopLite had said. "You want no soul, try BlueScreen and his tribe."
"Yes, balls and brains only. A fatal combination, especially in full-Diamonds. You could pity them for that if they weren't running the show."

Arianne had gone full search on the whole surface and found nothing. Joe had gone walkabout with his friend Arkuus, and they'd disappeared off the map the day she'd arrived.
Lunar Rescue didn't seem bothered. Joe had top skin rating, Arkuus was hard vacuum rated, no distress calls had come in, so don't worry was the message.
Between the lines they were too busy to care. A tourist shuttle had gone down in the Taurus-Littrow mountains and all their crews were at full stretch; hauling out survivors, hunting personal black boxes and fending off insurance calls and news services. On top of all that there'd been overflights and damage to the Apollo 17 archive site and the preservationists were out in force.

Lunar Jockey had re-appeared from its' break on the dark side, and offered to wait orbit long enough to take her home. The next shuttle could lift her out. It also hinted that Joe had signed diplomatic and headed back for Geneva on a freight lifter.
"Damn him," muttered Arianne. "There's something up, and he's gone mute on me again. Always too proud to ask. Always was."
"Older brother syndrome," said LJ over the link. "As you told me yourself."
Arianne paced up and down, bouncing lightly in sixth gee, as she scanned the options. If Joe didn't want her involved, in whatever, he'd be easier to track on Earth. And LJ could get her back fastest. It was configured freight itself this flight and would be running at maximum.
"Okay, you win my friend. Lift accepted with thanks."

Forty minutes later she was floating across from the GS dock, and admiring the sleek lines of Lunar Jockeys' hull.
"Looking good LJ," she said. "All that re-entry work is doing you good."
"An SSTO has to keep fit," it replied. "We're riding into Florida Port by the way. The closest I can get you this trip. That freighter uses the barges there, so you might catch Joe before he flies on."
"You're a star LJ. You'll be mentioned in despatches."
"Nothing too much for a hero of mine. Strapped in and ready?"
"Confirmed - Let's burn out of here."

Less than two days on and Arianne was walking the boardwalks with the Florida summer crowds. Tourism was almost dead since LandRestore had started and triggered the major exodus to ShipCity living. Unless one of the monsters had a turn to be offshore, and right now ShipCity One herself was in; come for the finals of the Florida Mud Swims.
The tops of the venerable old vessels' towers showed across half the horizon, and the sea was streaked by a fleet of wingship shuttles; carrying people, and hubot contestants, in for the Swims. SC One was keeping station seven miles out to avoid shading the shoreline.

Arianne was fascinated and appalled by the whole spectacle of the Mud Swims. Only hubots were able to swim, not even full-Diamond humans could apply, so it seemed like a new version of the old arena mentality. One particular group exploited for the doubtful enjoyment of the roaring majority.
She had a VisVerb link going with the Lunar Jockey, while it was down on it's barge for turnaround, and it gleefully pointed out two of the contestants; one a dull yellow/gold colour and the other a dark, armour-ribbed grey. Both with major realtime body-reform installed.
"Look at those guys for instance. What do they look like out of skin? They've graded so far from basic I'd doubt they can even get skin off."
"Their choice though isn't it LJ? Moving up from hubot-basic has been legal for decades. Same as humans going the other way, to full-Diamond."
"Just trying for the spirit of occasion Arianne. Lighten up why don't you"
Arianne laughed. "Okay LJ, this whole area worries me is all."
"Florida or just the bit we're in?"
"Ham in a can to you, Sir. You know what I mean. Too much like gladiators."
"They enjoy, and they can win high - All the old arguments. Plus death is out of the rulebook. Everyone goes home laughing."
Arianne rolled her eyes, but still stared at the two hubots.
"Oh, well, that's okay then." She paused. "I admit it though LJ, those two do give strange signals. What do you reckon it is?"
"Move your head left a bit, I can't see - - Maybe an air of some other agenda? Too well equipped for just a swim. Also trying for inconspicuous. Follow them round a bit. Let's see what they do."

Several hours later Arianne was fully involved in the rather eerie game. She still didn't know why, but the two hubots had all her warning instincts running at a hundred ten percent. And LJ didn't try to stop her.
Without realising it she'd found Joe after all - Except he was still on the Moon, and watching and listening to her every move. Lunar Jockey was quite capable of carrying on two converations at once, and was happily acting as a coms link, with Arkuus controlling the play.

The weather and the darkness were coming in nicely, and BlueScreens' agent was nearly ready to move into the restricted area. Deep in the heart of Yellowstone park, with the few permitted visitor vehicles flying out, it was as quiet and empty as Grimaldi liked best. His highly illegal, military spec skin told him he was clear and untagged. His dummy was on the last airbus out, and he was free go where he liked.
The drilling site he'd helped to choose and set up was an easy run in his exoleg rig, and he set off with a whistle and a laugh. This was what the old planet was for, even if he played pivot in a plot to break its' stone bones.

The tunnel to the borehole cap was carefully screened in a jumble of boulders and a state of the art surveillance cloak. Nothing and nobody was going to disturb his baby until it was fed and grown. And then no-one would dare come closer than a thousand K's.
Grimaldi neither knew nor cared what the hubots wanted to achieve with this ultimate act of eco-terrorism, he only knew what they were paying and what he could do with that much of a counter heap.
He had a few safety measures of his own installed; confident he could control the fireworks sufficiently to impress and still have a world to live on. Even so he had a desperate temptation to just let it all blow anyway - The biggest bang since the Big Bang.

By the time Arianne suspected what was really going on she no longer cared. "If you're hearing this Joe, and I'm pretty damn sure you are, you are going to suffer long and hard my man." She gritted her teeth as the aircar lurched to one side, avoiding a column of stone by the width of its' wings, and checked the readout one more time.
"And if this fucking wreck is the best chariot you boys can whistle up, then I'm on foot for the rest of my unnatural."
"It's the only fully stealthed vehicle on the planet Arianne," said the Jockey. "The only one. So don't complain - And don't break it."
"Well it's too late for my ass, so we'll just have to see won't we."
Joe sighed; a quarter million miles away. Arianne always talked like this when she was having a good time. He just wished it didn't make him so nervous. Arkuus was doing things with the coms channels he couldn't remotely understand, and he was starting to suffer spectators' despair. He sighed again and resigned himself to the back seat.

Kerval and HopLite were moving as fast as they could, hopping in and out of canyons and valleys every time any sort of signal came up on their aircars' scans. BlueScreen had promised the machine was satellite cloaked, to get them in safe and unseen. The only thing could track them was another aircar, and there was nothing showing. They'd paid too much up front, deliberately, but paranoia was still giving them a very bumpy ride.
Behind them, unseen herself, Arianne cursed their rollercoaster piloting for the fiftieth time. She shouted with relief when they finally set up for a landing in a clearing deep in a small canyon. She could see a place, not too far back, where she could land undetected and be up with them in half an hour.
"Don't worry," the Jockey called. "There's exolegs in the back. And food and drink, and anything else a body could need."
"Like that new ass I mentioned?"
"Don't be coarse Arianne - And mind that tree! Holy shit, that was close."
"I saw it yards back. You have no faith in me LJ."
"Just get down and get out. Our friends are having a little meeting."
'Does she have to pilot the damn thing herself?' thought LJ. 'I could run it from here and no-one would know the difference.'

Grimaldi came out of his tunnel with a wary grin on what was left of his face. The face was his excuse for being a loner on a crowded planet. The fact he could have it fixed in forty minutes was usually ignored; people saw the expressions he could achieve with it and kept their advice to themselves.
"Welcome clients," he slurred. "We're all set up here I think, the magic potion ready and waiting. It's for you to say the word and the spectacle begins."
"How long will it take?" asked HopLite. "The nano I mean."
"Hush - - Bad voodoo to say the word. But less than a day should do it. The pre-drill will give it a good start."
"Jesus!" said Kerval. "BlueScreen told us a month from first priming."
"Ah, well, that's BlueScreen for you. Probalby just wanted to move you along a little faster on the deal."
Kerval glanced at HopLite. Giving a good impression of doubt; as if thinking there was no time to take it all in, or reconsider the plan if anything got out of hand.
But HopLite only looked overjoyed, acting his turn, as if he'd second-guessed BlueScreen, and his toy was being delivered early. Kerval faked confused and kept quiet.

Arianne moved up to the edge of the clearing just after this first exchange. She thought into low-light so Lunar Jockey could see better through her eyes, and whispered to it for a check. She'd never got the hang of sub-vocal.
"Not so loud," hissed LJ. "The one with the face has the hottest skin rig I've ever heard of."
Arianne turned away and crouched down. "So, what do I do now?"
"Just watch and wait I'm afraid. We're going to send in a little help, now we know where to deliver. You going to be okay?"
"Fine. Just fine." Arianne crawled to wedge herself between two boulders. "Wake me up when who or whatever arrives."

The rear service deck of ShipCity One was a windswept and empty acre of lift heads, chopper hooks and assorted machinery waiting to be re-processed. The lift head farthest aft opened with a sharp hiss of escaping warm air.
The nearest observers were close on a kilometre further forward, and they were too busy with each other to look anywhere but down. Faint machine sounds were lost in gusts of salted air, rattling and tanging cables on the stern flagmast. The pod emerged and opened in the darkness.
Then a roar of sound, and a trail of fire, briefly caught the couples' attention; as a squat, cone-shaped missile launched and angled up and away from the ship. But the youth was thrusting hard, and the girl closed her eyes with a moan; pulling him tighter in.

Lunar Jockey had thought Arianne was joking, but had to shout twice to wake her. The first rapid look around from her eyes triggered its' hold-down clamps to the barge to tighten automatically.
"Arianne - - !"
"Oh, sorry - I forgot." She leaned out cautiously. "What's happening?"
"Back-up should be with you in about twenty seconds. Coming in from the east." It paused, and she thought she heard other voices on the loop. "It'll look like a Ranger drone."

Grimaldi had carefully opened the seal of the nano container to show off the contents to his clients. The sudden blast of light and sound behind him spun HopLite around, and the flask was knocked to the ground.
Grimaldi screamed and leapt backwards. But nothing much happened; the pale blob of nano put out a thin tendril, waved it around, and then crawled obediently back into its' pot. A little puff of dust spat out behind it.

Kerval ran 'frozen in horror', staring down, his voice a thin feedback whine.
"I heard that stuff frags people, hubots, anything - Turns them into mush - - ."
"HopLite turned back. "What - - ! What are you two running? Don't you see the lights. Hear the sound? Look, there - We're in shit deep!"
He flung one arm towards the Ranger drone, as if they'd still not seen it hovering above the clearing.
But Grimaldi had recovered himself. He raised one arm - And shot it down.

"Military skin," he said, after a long silence.

Arianne saw the flash line lance out from the full-Diamonds' arm. Watched in disbelief as the Ranger drone lurched sideways, swooped forward, and then spun down across the clearing to crash behind her. A thin column of smoke rose from the wreckage, there was a brief flash, and then nothing.
She suddenly felt deadly cold and horribly frightened. She'd spent years making fun of life, no longer the serious young woman who'd sailed solo to Mars, but now she saw all the danger all too clearly.
The two hubots and their full-Diamond accomplice had a clownish air about them, which had blinded her to how very dangerous they really were. She glanced back at the wreck and wondered how it had been meant to help her. She had no idea what she could do alone.

"Better get moving and prime this set-up to run," said Grimaldi. "No telling how long we've got now." He re-sealed the nano flask, thumbed open a security cover on its' side, spoke a series of numbers and letters, and carefully carried it into the tunnel.
"He's doing it," Kerval said, his voice so low that HopLite never heard him. His nerve was badly shaken, for real, but he made no move to stop what was happening. A dull fatalism replaced the fierce joy he'd imagined feeling. Whatever he'd wanted or expected from this seemed very distant to him now.
HopLite was staring at the wrecked drone. "Thought I saw something move," he said. "Probably some animal. Hey Kerval - We did it! We'll send the message and watch the bastards sweat."
"Message - - ? Oh, we should give the nano time to start. Make sure."
"Do we keep up this dumb act with that clown in the tunnel, or kill him now?"
"No, he can imagine he's got control a bit longer. I'll double-check the little extras he's set up first. Let's go watch him work."

Despite her fear Arianne was dozing again. Drifting into a strange twilight; trying for meditational states she'd used on Mars all those years ago. She'd not practiced for so long, decades and more, and was sinking into despair.
Then a voice whispered her name. A sibilant, slightly scratchy voice.
She remembered not to scream. Looked slowly around. Saw a pair of figures in the shadows. No more than three feet high.
Old fairy tales and abduction stories seethed from her hind brain at the sight and the shape of them.
"What - - . Who are you?"
"From Arkuus, and machine-Ai's. Remotes, with a little mind our own," the nearest one said. "They link through us. Are from flyer." It pointed to the wrecked drone. "It has armour pod."
"We knew they'd shoot it down," Arkuus' voice buzzed from the second remote. "Now they think the pressure is on. But from outside, at a distance."
"But they've armed the well cap with nano. All you've done is speed that up."
Arianne heard the whine in her voice and hated it.
"They were going to do that anyway. Best let them think they've succeeded. Then catch them as they move away." Arkuus voice faded, then returned. "Once they're travelling we let our little friends there disarm the system. The remotes are made of me - They're active, freeform nano themselves."
"Set a bug to catch a bug," muttered Arianne. She knew she looked twenty six to outside view, but suddenly felt incredibly old and useless on the inner; she decided everyone should wear a readout displaying real age.
The dawn was coming up and she could see the steam of hotsprings further down the canyon. Her body ached to be immersed in that water. She laughed to herself. The springs derived from primal forces that would blow the whole of Yellowstone apart, later if not sooner.

Arkuus and Joe were arguing; debating the best way to present or conceal the actions of the hubots, Kerval and HopLite. And the involvement of full-Diamond humans. Nothing like this scenario had been played for more than a hundred years.
"But how can you conceal?" asked Joe in exasperation. "You're telling me that's still possible? Then we're in more trouble than just the planet gutting itself in fifty years!"
"And if the world knows hubots threatened to blow it, we'll still get human rights?" Arkuus looked at him with head straight up. "I know how bad I sound. But this really is unprecedented. If nothing else, humans trust us now."
"No-one should trust anyone or anything, ever. But that's not the issue."
"Principles eh? Live the dream. In the face of all the evidence."
Joe was genuinely shocked. "Please Arko, let's leave this? I didn't think I'd live to hear you talk this way."
Arkuus was silent for a long time. Not moving, not appearing active at all. Finally he got up and looked down the tunnel to the surface of the Moon.
"You shame me Joe. Perhaps I should trade in this old body - Get a younger mind as well." He turned back. "You're right though. Present the whole truth it is. Publish and be damned."

As the sun rose Kerval, HopLite and Grimaldi were getting ready to leave. Grimaldi was nervous; somehow he didn't like the apparent naivete of his hubot clients. Something BlueScreen had observed; as simple as 'they can't be that simple. Watch them'.
The aircars' fans were powered up and tilting when the first shock hit, rocking the sleek body violently to one side, and smashing the port forward duct against a rock. The fan screamed, but kept turning, as self-repair routines unbuckled the casing and checked all rotating parts. The simple manager squawked, then got on with overseeing repairs.
No-one spoke. Increased seismic activity was predicted, as the vast dome of Yellowstone was forced upwards by slow but immense pressures beneath it.

Arianne threw herself from her refuge between two boulders as they rocked, and threatened to roll together. The remotes leapt upwards to balance on top; their small silver bodies swaying easily into balance.
As she looked up past them the hubots' aircar floated into view above the canyon rim, lifting on a rising hiss of fans, and tilted away to the east. Sunlight glinted on its' hull, and it was gone. They either hadn't seen her, or didn't care. Good riddance to them all.
"What now?" She spat out dust. "You guys get to work I guess. Me, I'm going for a bath."
The remotes seemed to float slightly as they jumped down in front of her.
"We look for nano now. Go into tunnel when safe. After shocks."
"You do that." Arianne looked at her strange helpers. "Let me know when there's anything I can do, okay." She wasn't sure who she was talking to, but assumed that Arkuus and Joe could hear her, as well as Lunar Jockey. For some reason the SSTO was silent, which only relieved her in her present mood. A curious, angry sensation of freedom and welcome loneliness.
The ground lurched more feebly and she risked getting to her feet. Walked slowly down the dusty canyon bed to the steaming hot springs below.

Lunar Jockey was busy. Airborne and in atmosphere; the work it loved best. High above the Florida coast it turned west and accelerated. Sonic boom reports started to swamp the eastern inland control centre for LandRestore; the callers furious and disbelieving.

Grimaldi saw it first. A cone of distortion in the clouds above and ahead of them, rapidly enlarging.
Then the aircar seemed to implode with sound - Punched downwards, almost to the ground, by the impact of supersonic shockwaves.
"Just a friend of mine, come to say hello," said a voice from the console. "If you good people sit tight we'll go on up to meet him."
After a seconds' stunned silence Kerval roared at the manager. "Keep to the course given or I'll pull out your simpleton transistor brain!"
Grimaldi pressed back and away, his worst fears about the hubots' real character and intelligence confirmed. But he wasn't alone in mistaking the level of anothers' abilities.
"Accept it Kerval," said the manager. "I just got upgraded, and the controls of this vehicle are locked to me. From your point of view it's over."
Kerval was silent, deep in thought or shock.
The aircar lifted back up to a thousand feet, and a huge shadow overtook it on the ground below.

The shadow-maker itself slid forwards beneath them - A streamlined, flattened delta maybe a hundred fifty metres long, with upturned and swept-back tips; its' white upper surface gleaming like a perfect eggshell. Halfway along, an aircar sized hatch was peeling open.
A grid of acquisition lights came on around the hatch and a new voice sounded in the cabin of the aircar:
"This is the Lunar Jockey. You are about to be taken aboard my vessel. Please observe all ships' safety regulations. Thank you."
As Kerval lifted a fist to the console his seat straps tightened in a vicious whiplash, pinning him deep in his seat.
"Try that again," said the manager. "And I'll strap you through the seat back."
Kerval hardened his skin, but the straps already dug deep. He yelped as they clicked in another notch.
HopLites' skin ribs had turned a powdery, light grey as he pushed back into his own seat. The manager relaxed the tension a little and he breathed out.
Grimaldi just swore. "Fucking machine - - ! Fucking BlueScreen - - ! I knew he didn't check out this flying shithouse full-hundred. Bastard was too busy growing new balls!"
The edge of LJs' open hatch went up past the aircars' screens, they sank into its' hold, and everything went dark.

"We got it," said a scratchy voice. "Got nano."
Arianne opened her eyes, peered through a drifting curtain of steam. Her two little helpers stood on boulders at the waters's edge. Their simple, ovoid heads nodded in unison.
"Well, that's good. What should we do now then?" She stretched out, and the upwelling water flowed new warmth around her.
"The luxurious aircar we provided awaits," said Arkuus through his nodding relay. "We thought a meeting of old friends might be nice. On ShipCity One perhaps? It's very keen to play host. What do you think?"
"That sounds just fine. Let me dig out a skin to wear, and I'm on my way. Do your little friends here want a lift?"
"I'd be very happy to see them, and you, Arianne - Meet in two days then?"
"Two days it is."

SC One was racing north for New Yorks' SeaDock; running on all one hundred engines and to hell with the E account. With a fresh sea breeze off its' starboard bow, and friends dropping in from all over, it was a happy ship.

The Lunar Jockey stood upright on the vast upper receiving deck, its' bulk looking no bigger than a small sail from a distant view, and felt the breeze on its' skin.
"Good to be sensing," it said. "A beautiful day to be out - And in good company. What do you say SC?"
"Couldn't agree more," sent the ship. "Party from orbit just checked in - The Selena Six and passengers. Here in twenty. Do you want to see them in?"
"My pleasure friend. Hand 'em over."

A second white sail floated down to the ShipCity on a tail of blue fire, settling beside the first on the long open area between two towers. As the vapour of its' descent blew away tiny figures emerged and moved forward in a group.

Joe and Arianne were embracing, all rivalries and resentments cancelled by meeting safe and well, and Arkuus was surrounded by the remotes, like a father with two excited children. He beamed a message out.
"You got a good hold on our errant friends Jockey? - All sharp things taken away I hope."
"Held in the hold. Unhappy but harmless," sent LJ. "You want to see them yet? I think anywhere out would suit them fine."
"In a while I think - We may have a proposition to put to them. Mis-guided they may have been, but I see a glimmer of silver lining in their madness."
"Oh, well, that's really clear Arko. I'm sure you'll enlighten me in time - Out."

"So the idea of releasing pressure from under Yellowstone park may not be so crazy after all, " Joe was saying. "If Active freeform Nano can be authorised, and with the right design, it can find it's own way down through the strata."
They were standing right at the tip of SC Ones' long slender forepeak, maybe two hundred metres ahead of the foaming bow wave.
"You mean," said Arianne, "that the world may not have to blow up in fifty years? We can do something about it."
"If we lighten up, and be adventurous again - What have we got to lose?"
Arianne looked at him and smiled. Then took Arkuus' slender, open-jointed fingers in one hand.
"Only the pleasure of living with friends I'd say. And a place to meet them."
She looked out ahead, over sparkling waves, then turned and waved to the ship. All along its' upper towers it sounded a rippling boom of horns and a whooping wail of sirens.

End

Copyright - John Coppinger  February 2000

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Yellowstone Blues            

   An Arianne Story                   

It was a fine sunny day in Yellowstone park, USA, in the year 2222. All the twos and maybe a bad omen at that, if any thinker went that way still, as the park was certainly not a good place to be. The whole area was closed, and the land around it to a radius of 1000K, a major part of mainland America.

Arianne was two decades past her double century; feeling fitter and younger than she had for nearly sixty years. She'd not been near the Yellowstone for most of that time. Now she was flying in over its' eastern border, with seven surveyors from LandRestores' caldera control team.
She thought a slow-down to her FlightSkin, drifting behind the others to get a solitary view. She remembered her flight across Mars, after winning the first solarsail race to the planet in the mid-200's, but this was in a genre of its' own.

The structure was immense. Even with her long experience of technical wonders and fabulous landscapes Arianne had seen nothing remotely like it.
Fifty miles by twenty of woven diamond struts, that arched up more than fifteen thousand feet, right over the central dome of the ancient caldera.
And even this was failing to hold in the pressure building from below.

The lattice of struts were a black that was absence of light, reflecting nothing but outlines and structure. Jets of vapour roared and whistled upwards between them - Controlled releases of superheated gas through diamond lined vents. The nano-borers had reinforced each vent with its' own web of supports, deep in the rock strata, but the system was still becoming unstable.
Nothing could control the earthquakes that were stressing the whole edifice to its' theoretical limits.

These earthquakes were already far worse, in number and in scale, than any of the simulations had predicted. And there was less than six months to the ultimate deadline.
Then the caldera would reach the end of another 64,000 year cycle of relative quiet, and explode with the force of ten thousand Krakatoas'.
Plans were running out, and desperation building, all over the world. The orbital platform program was limping along, effectively cancelled, and the ShipCity fleets were still sailing the worlds' oceans, some of the units nearing two hundred years at sea. Nearly all the eggs were still in one basket.

The whole survey party had run enough virtual to last long lifetimes. They wanted to see and smell the real thing in all its' wild fury. Now the wish was granted the reality was almost beyond comprehension - Watching the raw processes of a planet about to mutilate itself.
Not one of them, for all their combined years and experiences, had fully internalised the scale, and the sheer, uncaring power, of what could happen here - Most of continental America shattered by blast, falling debris and layers of ash. Then the whole planet sheathed in sunlight-blocking dust for decades or longer. A far colder climate was certain, a new ice-age a distinct possibility.

Ariannes' brother, Joe, was sitting on a terrace overlooking the lake at Geneva. His old friend Arkuus sat opposite, resplendant in a new body, and hugely pleased with himself and his choice.
Joe was not about to disagree with him; there was no doubt that Arkuus looked, and felt, splendid. Morning sunlight sparkled on his mobile face and five-fingered hands.
Joe himself had finally gone full-Diamond some thirty years back, and could still be amazed by the memories and comparisons with living as a biological.

"So, tell me how it went. Pretty scary after all these years, eh?" said Joe.
He grinned at his friends' discomfort. "I'll get it over with in one." Paused.
"I Told you So - - - There, that wasn't so bad was it?"
Arkuus nodded. "Witty, Joe, you are not. But I know from your juvenile tone that, really, you are pleased for me."
"Of course I'm pleased for you. You look diamond wonderful!"
Arkuus grinned, he could do that now, and grinned again at the thought.
"So, who is the human, and who the hubot - We can't really tell any more can we?" He lifted his hands to admire them. "All those years fighting for equality."
Joe glanced at his own hand, not so different externally but totally different structurally, able to survive a hard vacuum or dive to the deepest ocean floor. "The robots didn't take over. We became them. And you became us."

Arkuus' new head retained an echo of the old, roughly ovoid with a slight, silvery sheen, but his new face and eyes were subtly expressive of character. "Does Arianne understand what we might ask of her?"
"Does she trust us after our last little adventure you mean?"
"Both," said Arkuus. "This could face her with dark and youthful demons."
"Aren't we all in that place? Facing our only home burning down."
Arkuus nodded, looked at one hand again, then out across the bright lake waters. His expression shifted and flowed, but he didn't speak.

The original well cap was now encased in a solid dome of carbon-black diamond; ribs flowing away into the surrounding rocks in every direction.
"It's active," said Harlen, the lead surveyor. "Changes dynamically with any movement of the upper mantle."
Arianne looked around the excavation where a shallow tunnel had been. Her last memories of the place rose up with a shiver.
"So why can't it handle the quakes?"
"Too many, too close together, and too severe. We're outside the limits of our technology here. Strange but true."
Arianne stared at her. "There's nothing we can do - You're saying that?"
Harlen shook her head. "Only more of the same. Till we run out of material." She waved all around. "We could bury the whole area under a mile of diamond. Then the crust would collapse anyway - We need something more dynamic than we know how to build right now. More dynamic than is theoretically possible actually."

Arianne cursed inwardly as she walked away down the canyon to remembered hot springs. Always just barely enough, just barely in time. All through human history and beyond. This time the luck might have been pushed too far.
Useless to go to hindsight - Put all the resources into space platforms rather than the caldera control project. But how would that have been? Watching from space as the planets' ecosphere was wrecked, maybe to extinction.
'We had to try it I guess,' she thought. 'Better than too little, too late.'

The hot springs were almost as she remembered them, except this time she wouldn't be swimming. The waters were visibly boiling, and her post-human body wasn't rated for such extremes in just a FlightSkin.
She was mildly curious about her own reluctance to go full-Diamond. Even Joe, perversely staying full-human so long he was almost the last, had made the jump.
And Arkuus finally had his new body. She'd even helped him to choose it.
'I'm two hundred and twenty one. I'm feeling good. So what can be wrong?' She waved one hand in angry frustration. "just the only planet we've got, going to hell, is what. Enough to spoil anyones' day." Her voice echoed faintly from beyond the rising steam.

Something was happening again on Mars. Something weird. The Sentinel Archive sats were co-ordinating scans onto an area within the Valles Marineris. This seemed to be the source, but the data shifted and deceived in indefinable ways. Mathematicians all over Earth and the Moon were fascinated.
The VM was vast. Even the Colorado rivers' sculpt of the Grand Canyon would only make one small side branch of the Martian system. A fleet of robot surveyors had still hardly mapped it in outline; whole areas remained unsampled and relatively unknown.

The biggest puzzle of the last fifty years was the whereabouts of swarms of alien remotes. Tiny, autonomuous machines. These had briefly appeared on Mars, during Ariannes' landing, then completely vanished.
Not a sign, a trace, even a track on the surface, to show they had been there. The Sentinels watched night and day. Rovers crawled and bored into huge areas of the planet. But nothing had ever been found or seen again.

Harlen was on a secure channel. Even if the caldera had blown right then she'd not have noticed. Data was pouring into her upgrades above the red-line, and she felt sick, dizzy, and excited beyond her wildest hopes.
The base had overridden her filters and firewalls in the urgency of getting an opinion. Even as her body vomited, she upped the data inflow rate.

Arianne walked back just in time to see Harlen fall. The surveyor was alone, but her FlightSkin saved her nose from a crack on the ground. She lay, apparently lifeless, across the the side of a diamond rib, her legs at strange angles and her hands clenched.
Two of the other surveyors crash-dived back into the excavation, floated to a stop beside the black rib, and punched the LifePack on Harlens' neck.

Arkuus crashed into the hotel room with a loud cry, and Joe leaned back over the bed in alarm. In a hundred and twenty years he'd never seen his friend so animated. And he needed to get a grip on facial expressions. His grin got wilder every time he used it.
"You get the data?" Arkuus was slapping the side of his own head.
"No," said Joe. "I didn't. I was switched out for some relaxation." He looked levelly at his friend. "You'll break that new face if you don't go easy."
Arkuus just shook his head in denial.
"Later with jokes Joe. Something's surfacing on Mars. Just as we predicted. That was going to be such a long shot, sending Arianne, but now it looks promising. Much more promising."
Joe opened the balcony window. "Come outside Arko. Sit in the sun, and the soundshade, and tell me all about it."
Arkuus looked shaken. "You're not shaded in here? No, sorry, of course not. Looks like I filed a youngmind add-on with this body. A more careless one certain."
"Don't worry," Joe led the way. "No-one's tagged us. I swept and sealed."

Ten minutes later Joe was staring at the table, frowning. "So that's it? Strange data from the Sentinels. Nothing else?"
"I tried to be clear for you Joe. I'm not maths rated, not even enhanced. But the top rated MathAi's haven't danced so happy in all my loadtime."
Joe snapped a bit of stone off the archive balustrade. Looked down guiltily. "Force too high," he muttered. "Damn it Arko. Why does it fall on Arianne again? She'll not go back is my guess."
"Info is she's already taken." Arkuus smiled his face more carefully. "Went in with Survey on a volunteer."
"Yellowstone?" Joe was near shouting. "You let her in there - It could blow any second!"
"No-one let her in. She asked to go." He leaned back. "And the latest predictions give it longer. Ten months minimum."
"Oh, plenty of time then, plenty of time."

~ [+Turning and turning in the widening gyre+] _ What meaning? _ Data of Bio mind _ When? _ How long? _ Rocks/dust _ Pressure _ [+Things fall apart+] _ Frightened _ [+The centre cannot hold+] _ Arianne _ Strange!! ~

Harlen was feeling much better, humourously self-critical for being so careless, the info dump had nearly killed her. But there was a wild light of excitement in her eyes.
"Codes. Encryption. Just a backwater without a war," she went on, seeming to relapse. "The MathAi's think there's something there though. In the weird data. Something talking to itself!"
"Something where?" asked Arianne in her calmest voice. "What are you talking about Harlen?"
"Mars. I'm talking about Mars."

The Sentinels turned and tuned, as the source shifted and slid along frequencies in patterns their intelligence couldn't follow. One thing was certain though. The anomaly, whatever it's nature, was centred in the Valles Marineris canyon system.
The latest decodeware was flooding into the Sentinels' banks from Earth, the Moon and several interested scienceship Ai's that were working InSystem.
And the theory that the source was talking, apparently to itself, got stronger with every run-through of the signals.

~ Am Bio _ Remember being _ Am cold _ Long time _ [+ Virused my skin - To make a weapon +] _ Language of _ Arianne _ Use Bio self now _ Again? _ [+ Remotes - All around me +] _ What else? _ Nothing _ Yet ~

Deep in the cold, dead rocks something was moving, waking, from a sleep that had lasted too long. A sleep since the planet was young.
It didn't know what it was, using a language that wasn't its' own, couldn't be; but it had memories, long ages past, of being a bio-form - - - .
It knew a name, not its' own, a name for this alien language it thought in. While it was lost. The name was - - - Arianne.
And it was cold, strange sensation, with its' own ancient memory of what that meant - - - A body in water? gone cold. Waking up - - - cold - - - .

Rocks moved, sifting dust, as structures were self-analysed and restored. Systems came on, looking for power.
Gases were tested and exchanged, or generated new from layered galleries of minerals. Crystal bands in the rock.
A faint glow of light in the dust; an orange-red gloom.
The core was intact, but degraded by time, time enough for the planet to have died. No heat, the volcanoes all long dead, long past dormant. Energy from surface light the only source, just enough to feed core function heaters.
It had run. And hidden here. And slept - - - .

Now a body was designed and forming; resolved from another mind that gave it thought again, and time.
Raw consciousness it had been.
An infinite point; floating outside any time, any dimension.
Zero space.
For a moment, a second or two, a billion years.

The body would be comprehensible to the language and world that had given it pattern to form from. So close to Origins. A long step back to go forwards.

Every time Arianne flew a FlightSkin she was amazed. Like a child dreaming; floating through air with arms outstretched.
They lifted out from the centre of Yellowstone and wove their course back between the roaring, supersonic gas columns, to a base at the parks' edge. No-one spoke as they flew, each one absorbed in thoughts of the coming catastrophe. And the enigma on Mars.

Harlen went straight to her console to upgrade and verify, in case she'd lost anything when she crashed, and the others dispersed to variously sleep, eat or catch up on the files.
Arianne wasn't hungry or tired, so she wandered back outside to wait for the next aircar. She had a dinner date with Joe and Arkuus in Geneva and wanted to catch the early evening eastcoast sub-orbital.
She walked on in the late morning sunshine. A quiet corner in a tangle of boulders seemed a good place to sit and think.
Within seconds she was asleep. Dreaming back to her days on Mars. Drifting high above the landscape or walking lightly on its' surface. Always in amazement at being there; overawed by the colours and the details.
But she'd not flown over, or into, the Valles Marineris canyons; how could she know so exactly how that looked? Or feel the fierce updraughts, and the exhilaration of riding the winds through the vast, unearthly landscape?
Then she was landed, down on the surface.
And saw the figure walking towards her.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Arianne said that evening. "I fell asleep in some rocks and missed my first flight. Had the weirdest dreams about Mars though. Areas I never got to, as clear as real memories."
Arkuus looked at her sharply, then at Joe.
"It was Mars that we wanted to talk to you about."
"How you'd like me to go back. Find whatever it is that's waking up there?"
She caught Arkuus' hand in hers.
"I don't know how I know that, except it was after the dream - Something, or someone, was calling me. As if I knew them."
Arianne was far more frightened than she could admit. Some part of it was the shock on Arkuus' face; the eerie quality of emotions visible after so many years being hidden.
Another was confusion of reason; the witchery of intuition and dream wisdom that she'd never been able to accept. She didn't want strange abilities she couldn't understand or control.
But the real fear came from 'knowing' that she'd been infected by the remotes on Mars after all. Despite all the quarantine checks and scans the tiny machines had taken and given in ways Earth technology couldn't yet measure or explain.
On behalf of what? Of who?

Joe was trying to explain that erosion of the World Councils' power was getting worse, not better under the pressure of emergency.
With so many factions and minority interests previously happy to be at sea, each in their own ShipCities, the organisation of discontent was difficult to achieve, but even more difficult to track and combat.
And morale was sapped by guilt - The Yellowstone project was promised as a solution. And it was known to be failing.
Both Joe and Arkuus had been pivotal figures in the case for freeform nano being used to defuse the caldera. So they'd suffered and doubted.
And the space colonies' funding had been plundered. Now only a tiny minority would get off the planet when disaster struck.

"I know all that Joe, enough of it anyway. What you're really saying is, your science advisory thinks, unofficially, that whatever's on Mars might help."
Arianne gulped down her dwindling courage.
"And I'm the link. You must suspect it, but I know it consciously now - Those remotes got to me when I was on the surface after all." She shuddered back tears. "That wasn't a dream made me late today - It was a message. It's been inside me all the time."
Joe and Arkuus were silent. Unable to argue what now seemed inevitable.
"And not just a message. It's asking for help itself." She paused, trembling.
"I don't know which is more frightening. But it doesn't know who it is, except through us. Through me. I woke it up."
Joe took her hand. Spoke very low. There were tears in his eyes.
"Is that why you never went full-Diamond?"
"Yes, I think it probably is. Deep down I thought I'd wake up as something alien. And I never had lovers for the same reason. I might have infected them. I've been feeling like an outcast, and didn't even know it."
Then she did cry, for the first time in half a century, falling onto Joes' shoulder. His own tears fell past hers to the floor.

Much later Arkuus suggested a new series of scans. To see if the alien component in Arianne was now visible, or would even reveal itself.
"I think it might," she said. "It's visible to me in a way isn't it."
"How did it feel - - to you. The dream?" Joe was desperately worried.
"Mostly what seemed like genuine memories, like I said, but I still knew they weren't. The rest of it - - Like teaching a child to speak. It's the only way I can describe it. I think it's re-building an identity from our language, and dim memories of its' own origins. Does that make any sense?"
"If it's been dormant more than a billion years, I think it does," said Arkuus. "Its' higher mentality got damaged by sleeping in, and it's re-starting from basics is my guess."
"Which is somewhere around our level," said Joe. "We should get on just fine then. If it doesn't know it's come down in the world, it can't be elitist about it."
Arianne smiled, her expression softened by a wondering sadness.
"We're calling it 'it' all the time. Just like we did with the Ai's. First thing it needs to know is its' name."

Bertrice and Orlope met them in the lower offices of World Council LandRestore and Archives. The vehicle was on standby, prepped for flight, and its' senior manager wished them a cheery 'good morning' as they stepped aboard.
"Not taking any chances," whispered Joe. "One fart, and they're into orbit."
"Quite right too," said the manager. "Would you like that erased?"
"No, you can let it stand," said Joe. "Thank you anyway."

Orlope was an impressively tall and slender full-Hubot hermaphroform, currently running male and ebony skin. His welcome was curt and formal.
Bertrice was a full-Diamond who'd watched too many archive Monroe movies. Her blonde hair bobbed with every syllable.
Arianne actually remembered Bertrice from one of her earliest lecture tours, 'a rather charming semi-sycophant' came up on her internal file.

Orlope was rigid with impassive non-commital. Bertrice wrote 'regret' with every emphatic sway and bounce of her rounded body.
The message was clearly stated that all funds were committed to the caldera containment project, that it would continue to upgrade and respond to the emergency, and therefore no funding was possible, nor approval likely to be granted, for any landing of active personel on Archive Mars.

"Did we just have a History Experience?" asked Joe, once they were back outside. "I thought that behaviour died with the Twentieth."
Arkuus sighed. "We discussed this Joe. We knew the attitude, we wanted it on record, and we got just what we wanted. Did I miss something?"
"I was joking Arko. It goes with smiling, now that you can do that thing."
"Easy Joe," said Arianne. "We did know how it would be."
"Easy - - ? Too damn easy to predict - That's my anger." He strode away, then back again. "I tell you, this planet deserves to blow away some days."

The meeting was set for mid-day, sound-shaded and fully cloaked on all entry and exit routes. Consequently not a single party was on time, apart from Joe.
He paced up and down the Great Wall in a fury of frustration, refusing to run Karm on any level, so the others could get his full opinion un-filtered.

Joe couldn't believe how long it had taken to arrange this, more than fourteen hours, and now it was more than twenty minutes past the hour.
Then, suddenly, he laughed out loud. The mood was broken, and he sat down in a broken saddle of stone to run over all the primary plans.
As charts and mission routes and launch windows played across his retinas he was suddenly aware of a figure standing further down the Great Wall; through the clearing and storing info it had the weirdest look. What were the clothes made of? Some sort of new skin?
Then he shook his head, and it was only Arianne walking towards him.

Within five minutes the party began to assemble. Lunar Jockey, in orbit above them, had declined to land and sent a holorep of a slender chinese girl - In full terracotta costume. But the most surprising figure was Kerval; the full-hubot who'd forced the Hubot-Rights campaign into focus nearly fifty years earlier.
It was his nano-seeding of the Yellowstone that led directly to the caldera control program. Now he was a repected researcher into planetary dynamics, with special interest in Martian geo-history.
Kerval wore an elegant new body, skinned golden-yellow. His narrow, aquiline head and extended limbs were echos of his old armour-racing days.
"Hellfire, Kerval, but you're looking good," said Joe. "How are you. What's your link to this mad-brained party?"
"Arkuus didn't tell you?" Kerval looked worried. "Ah, his thought of a joke I guess. I'm going to lead Arianne in along the Valles Marineris; it's my speciality now. If and when we can get a flight and a landing."
"Flight is do-able. Landing illegal at best," said Joe with a grin. "Just like the good old days. I still remember sweating it on Deimos, trapped in a FormFitter."
"A FormFitter - Retro diving suit! You're a braver entity than I Joe."
"I was young and foolish. And my sister needed a good laugh."
"You got her out. Saved her from the alien remotes I heard."
"Maybe," said Joe, frowning. "Maybe - - ."

Two weeks later the plans were finalised and under way. Operation 'Wake up Sleeper' Joe had named it.
Joe and Arkuus had gone to ground; to oversee all cover stories, control any problems with the Sentinels round Mars, and generally watch all their backs.
Arianne and Kerval were on their way to orbit and the Moon, aboard the SSTO Lunar Jockey, to rendevous with the onward transport to Mars.

"You'll like this ship," said the Jockey. "Not exactly The Ritz, but a sprinter; fastest ship InSystem. Better than a sail anyway, Arianne."
"To be devoutly hoped," said Arianne. "Tell me LJ, what exactly does the Mighty Mole do? When it's not hired for a pirate run."
"Sniffs out and chases asteroids now. Built for SafeGuard back in the late 200's. Old maybe, but still the best. And she's surface-rated for Mars."
"I've heard of the Mole," said Kerval, polite doubt in his voice. "Didn't she get busted, for running two asteroids together? When the last President was Lunar bound."
"Just her idea of fun. No sense of humour those security ships - It was a hornets' nest!"
Kerval nodded. He'd definitely heard of the Mighty Mole. Arianne stared him a question, but he just shrugged.
"I'll let you know then LJ," she said, eyes narrowed. "At least with a sail you know where the light lies. We meet off the dark side, yes?"
"We do," said the Jockey gleefully. "Plots and machinations - I love it!"

~ Body Form was ready. Both Refuges were ready. All constructors transferred to New-Refuge shell. Ready for impact - for Pick-Up.
Now was just First-Meeting. [+Arianne+].
Excitement!! ~

A raised dome on the floor of the canyon - A major feature if seen on earth, but only a detail in the vast landscape of the Valles Marineris.
White feathers of cirrus, high up in the wide, pink sky.
Waves and ripples of fine orange dust rushing and eddying along the canyon floor, swirling around and over the dome. Sand-blasting its' layers.
A thin, eerie howl, as a tornado flickered and lashed at terraces and hollows five miles away. Veering off towards the mile high walls on the horizon. Escorted by flurries of dust-devils, weaving and racing all around the base of its' motion.
It was standing in the doorway.
Watching the storm.
The Body.

The Mighty Mole was powering out of Lunar orbit, her panels hinged open to catch the sun, as Earth and Moon fell away astern.
The hull was a simple cylinder, with panels and engines mounted on front and rear caps respectively, plus various legs and tools clipped to tracks on a lengthwise spine.
Her acceleration was astonishing, and unrelenting. Kerval and Arianne pushed up from their couches on the rear bulkhead and staggered about its' cluttered surface. At nearly 3G even Ariannes' up-rated skin struggled to keep her comfortable. Kervals' new body performed slightly better.
"How you folks doing?" asked the Mole. "This is it for three days to get you there fastest. Sorry about the mess, I'll reconfigure in a while."
"Before we started would have been nice," muttered Arianne. She looked up again, checking supplies clamped to what would become the walls, once the ship had landed.
"We'll get away with your cover?" asked Kerval. "Still seems thin to me."
"I'm booked onto Deimos as an Archives sample mission," said the Mole, her tone waspish. "As we agreed. After that you're on your own. I've an idea for a little diversion - But best you don't know what that is just yet."
"That I believe," said Kerval to himself. "Isn't using an Archive permit playing it a little high?"
"Bit late to worry, now we're outbound. Relax Kerval. Archives' hierarchy has so many layers they're the best cover of all - Skin of the onion sort of thing."
"Yes, I see." Kerval rolled his eyes. "Thanks for clearing that up."
"My pleasure," said the Mole, and boosted her engines to max power.

"Why's the Mole rated itself female?" asked Arianne on a private channel. They were back in their couches, working hard at breathing. Kerval sighed.
"All part of the image I suspect. A feisty little ship is the kindest I've heard. Very much a loner - But I guess she's the one can get us in."
"We'd better hope so. This is like riding an intensive-care unit."

Just over twelve weeks later Arianne and Kerval shifted back from twenty two hour sleeping periods.
Mars was three days away, and Deimos rendevous in four.
Mighty Mole had turned for her final braking manouevre, to catch the orbit of the small martian moon, and the deceleration was as fierce as the two passengers had feared. The Mole was casual and upbeat as ever.
"Nothing I can do about it folks. I run fast, not comfortable. You want to check those stores before we hook on?"
Arianne suppressed a curse, lifting her head painfully to look along the racks and clamped-on pods. The antique screens above them showed a limited, grainy view of the red planet ahead.
"All looks okay to me. What's the weather like out there?"
The Mole laughed. "Sentinel Central acknowledges our permits. Cleared to hook to Deimos at our convenience. They're busy with the best series of storms this century - Looks like the dust is dying down though."
Kerval wasn't pleased. "Might have been better to go in under a storm."
"Oh, rubbish Kerval," said the Mole. "It spoils the view, and the Sentinels see right through it anyway."
"That I'm aware of." Kervals' voice was icy. "But it diverts their attention away from details. Any edge we can get is going to help."
"Don't you worry about diversions. Old Mole has got all that in hand."
"And you are going to enlighten us beforehand?"
"No - - It'll go better as a surprise to you too."
Kerval was speechless. Arianne just grinned. She was beginning to like the Moles' style, even if it did keep the nerves a little lively.

Mighty Mole was turning to a graceful touchdown on Deimos, reaction engines giving a punch to their fall in the minimal gravity. Her legs reached out, and clawed to a hold on the surface, then bolts shot in to make sure.
"Down and dusted," she called. "Want to have a better look round?"
"No, we'll just stay in here another six months," said Kerval, floating up from his couch. "It's been such a pleasure Ms. Mole."
"No sense. No gratitude. Don't know why I go to all the trouble."
"Give her a break Kerval," said Arianne. "Don't forget we still need her."
"Too right you still need me. Once you're on your way down I'll start up my little show for those 'spy in the sky' boys."
"Can't wait," muttered Kerval. "Just can't wait."

Mighty Mole was still laughing when her two passengers exited the main hatch and took their first nervous steps on the surface of Deimos. Even more when Kerval bounced from the ladder and floated, arms waving, above the dark moon for nearly a minute. Arianne reached up to haul him down and lifted off herself with a whoop of delight. "Lighten up Kerval. It's this easy!"
But Kerval was already grinning with the joy of space to move, and things to see. They were deep inside a crater, nearly a mile across. Its' rim circled them with a feeling of safety.
Mars filled most of the sky above, still dulled and de-focused by the remnants of the last storm. Even so, its' colours and patterns were an extraordinary feast after a long, cramped and boring journey.

The Mole had unbolted and stalked off on her long insect legs. She was planting pods and packages, most of them dummies, to look like a major sampling experiment being set up. Her panels had hinged back along the main cylinder for landing, and now they opened up again like a bizzarre neck frill.
"Handsome beast 'ain't she?" Kerval said, but his voice was strangely fond.
Arianne looked at him, puzzled, then took his hand to walk back to the spacecraft. Within a few hours they would be on their way across to Mars.

It didn't feel like ascending. Deimos fell away behind them as if it was the moon that moved.
Then, very rapidly, they were falling towards the red planet. Both of them unfolded aeroshells, lay back in concave body-forms, and waited for their chute packs to count down. This descent was going to be fast and simple.
Ten seconds before opening the whole of the nearside of Deimos lit up with a violent and spectacular display of lights and coloured fountains.
Kerval remembered not to transmit. "What the fuck is she doing!" he breathed to himself, as balls of green light raced around the rims of several craters.
Both drogue chutes opened, the most dangerous moment for detection, but the Sentinels this side of Mars were all looking elsewhere.
'Excellent - -! But if she gets busted again how in hell do we get out?'

At less than a mile, well inside the canyon, the main chutes opened, with under a second to spare. Plenty of time, actually, the managers assured their loads, as the re-formed aeroshells crumpled on impact.

The Body saw the flowers open. Heard a high, thin clap of sound seconds later. The dust settled.
Two figures climbed slowly upright.

Kerval was in his element now. Gazing round in wonder at a spectacular red and orange landscape; clearing to view from the last eddies of scouring winds.
A faint, eerie whistling around their feet, and high up in the sky.
"As advertised, plus fifty percent." he whispered.
Arianne tuned to the minute pulse of his transmission. "What did you say?"
"Even the best simulations don't do this justice. Look at those walls!"
He pointed away to the horizon, and cliffs that curved across the planets' edge. Nearer to, buttes and mesas lifted from wind-carved terraces and hollowed bowls, with ornate ridges, like stepped pathways, linking and defining them. Dunes of sand swept up to, and crescented around, every boulder and feature.

"Did we land near enough?" asked Arianne. "Can we walk it?"
"Oh, we did just fine. The dear old Mole aimed us dead on the mark." He peered to the east. "About three miles that way, give or take a yard or two."
The chute packs behind them were already re-forming into stand-by mode, disguising as thin slabs of martian rock.
"You worried Kerval - About what we'll find?"
His narrow head turned, his expression unreadable.
"Fear still comes different to hubots I guess. But, yes, I'm nervous."
Arianne nodded, touched his shoulder and began to walk.
"Come on then. I have this weird sense of welcome. I think we're expected."

Joe was pacing up and down the tunnel entry to Arkuus' earthside retreat, buried inside an ancient cave system, far out in the Australian bush.
They'd spent twelve weeks as isolated as the travellers on Mighty Mole.
"What's she done now?" he called out. "If the Sentinels get wind of a landing she'll be nailed onto Deimos for good."
"A certain raw style she has," said Arkuus. "But the timing was impeccable. We'll get them back Joe. And sit down before you turn an ankle. We've got a long walk out of here too."

The Body stood in the open doorway. Two figures moving towards. One of them - - - Arianne.
~ They look up. And see. Fear - - - Strange!! ~

Kerval stopped dead, almost recoiled, and grabbed Ariannes' shoulder.
"What on Mars is that?" His body had crouched involuntarily. "Weird!"
Arianne looked up, and saw, and smiled. Her hands shook she knew.
"It's done the best it can. From what it saw in me."

The Body was Adam and Eve. It was all of Earth, and all the life on it. Elements of clothing seemed made of flesh, mottled like a woodland clearing. And parts of the limbs seemed landscape; cliffs and rocks and lichen in the structure of muscle and joints. It was innocent and powerful as Gaia herself.

The voice, when it spoke, was male; fluting to birdcalls and the songs of whales. And the echoes of a wise female child.
"Welcome," it said. "You are Arianne. I made myself from you."

"I know - - ." Ariannes' voice was a whisper above the sighing wind. "Do you know who you are - Do you have a name?"
"No Name," it said. "Not yet - - - ." It looked down. "I slept - - - Too long."

The doorway it stood in was entrance to a house built of choice and history. Parts of all the doors that had ever been. A sunlit and friendly ruin.
It gestured them forwards. Invited them inside.
"Do we go in?" Kervals' voice was a croak of wonder.
"Of course."

"I think they're in," said Arkuus. "The Mole reports loss of their signals on the surface. And something pulled the Sentinels off her back." He checked a look at Joe. "She believes she could go in for a landing if need be."
"I'm supposed to be reassured by that - What does loss of signals mean?"
"Don't turn dumb on me now Joe. I know you're worried, but we discussed all this - If they got invited into wherever this thing lives, they were probably going to go. On their own judgement."
"Else why visit in the first place - I know." He looked up at Arkuus. "Do you think this thing is benign?"
"This we've been over and over too - I don't know Joe. I believe it is - Yes."
"Hang on. You said the Sentinels were blind, or whatever. What could do that?" He was pacing again. "Their primary role is to watch the surface."
"Our host on Mars I would think, wouldn't you? It's been there far longer than we've been here. I imagine it has rights and powers of tenancy it can call on."
"Holy shit," muttered Joe. "The things we do get into - - ."

"Do I appear - - - Reasonable?" The Body asked. It was standing in the centre of a domed space that neither Arianne nor Kerval could properly resolve; as if it wasn't sure how to present itself to their eyes and memories.
"You look - - just fine," said Arianne. The figure embodied all the elements of a lost and ideal world. Something she had carried, forgotten, since childhood long ago. The effect almost had her in tears.

"You are not complete are you?" asked Kerval. Arianne looked at him sharply. "Not the whole of what we are talking to."
"I am as much as I can be. For now. As much as Arianne woke from sleep." Its' androgynous face shifted like leaves in a breeze. "The rest may be lost. I don't yet know."
"Can you help us?" Kerval persisted. "You know why we're here?"

The Body had turned away, as if in pain. It's renewed smile was very strange.
"I know about the volcano - - - Yes. My constructors observed the effects last time it changed your planet. And all the times before. The events were recorded."
Arianne gripped Kervals' arm to silence his renewal of the question. Her voice sounded strange to her in this space.
"We don't know if we can help you. But we're asking you to help us."

Mighty Mole was touching down on the surface where Arianne and Kerval had landed. Her monitors showed no sign or signal from either.
The disguised parachute/ascent rigs identified and requested to come on board. She reached out an arm and gathered them up.

Three miles to the east a gap in the side of a dome of rock showed the faintest signal of heat against the background. The only clue she could find.
'What a place,' she thought. 'Never guessed I'd get to go walkabout on Mars.'

The Mole moved cautiously but steadily forward, her footpads stirring little puffs of dust from the surface. She knew, somehow, that no Sentinel beam would lance down to interrogate her. All her sensors focused on the dome ahead, and the enigmatic doorway in its' side.

"Your friend is here," said the Body. "Outside. Your machine."
"The Mole?," breathed Arianne. "How did she get here?"
"She was invited. The Sentinels watch, but I prevent them from seeing."
The Body wore a different, calm, smile now. "You should fly away from here for a while. The means I will use would be very violent for you."
"What will you do?" Kerval had stepped back.

The laughter was like a wind through reeds, or the distant cries of swans against a sunset. "I will move my house. So that I may come with you."

Bertrice and Orlope were staring sightlessly past each other in the World Council Archives central office. The vehicles' managers were on full alert.
The retinal displays they were seeing were unbelievable.
Deimos was moving. Out of orbit. Towards Mars.
The Sentinels on that side of the planet were relaying in real time, but even so the delay was the minimum twenty minutes.

The nine-mile long, potato shaped moon had looped out, slowed down, and now dipped inwards again to skim the atmosphere of Mars at just above the planets' own rotational speed.
"It's going to hit in the Valles Marineris," called a calculator in the link. "Estimated impact in five minutes, received signal time."

Mighty Mole stood on the tip of a promontary, admiring the vertiginous view into and across the largest canyon in the solar system. Kerval and Arianne held onto her forward legs, staring upwards in wonder and disbelief.
Deimos was coming in, growing larger in view every second, skimming along the length of the canyon and down into its' depths.
"It's going to hit the dome!" shouted Kerval, leaning right out over the edge. The Mole pulled her leg, and him with it, backwards a foot.
"Look - - Look, it's hit!"

For just under three seconds relative velocities allowed Deimos to touch, perfectly balanced, onto the rock dome they'd stood in less than two hours before.
The dome crushed in, dust spurting and jetting violently side