“But, Old-timer,” Djanet started, her voice filled with both alarm and confusion, “if she really is 1, then why the elaborate game? We know 1 can take over anyone in an android body at any time!”
Old-timer didn’t have an answer.
“She’s leading us there, don’t you see?” Djanet insisted. “It has to be a trap.”
Old-timer shook his head. “She already led us into the trap,” he pointed out. “She led me right into the middle of the replicator facility, where she could’ve dumped androids on me endlessly until even my upgraded abilities wouldn’t have been able to save me, but then V-SINN interrupted.” He grimaced as he mulled the puzzle in his mind. “I think she’s calling an audible.”
“Audible?” Djanet reacted, perplexed.
“It means when the quarterback changes the planned play based on circumstances,” Samantha interjected.
This shocked Djanet.
“Uh...it’s from football,” she added.
“Oh,” Djanet replied. “American football.”
“Yes. Craig likes football. American football.”
Djanet’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know—”
“Not important,” Old-timer quickly stopped Djanet’s question. “Colonel Paine,” Old-timer cut into communication with the Colonel. “Do you have 1 in your sights?”
“She’s way ahead of us, Craig, but we’re on her tail,” Paine’s voice replied through their mental connection.
“Is Daniella safe?” Old-timer asked.
“I’m fine, Craig,” Daniella replied, her voice filled with uncertainty, as though the awkwardness of being with the ghost of the man she’d helped to kill—a man who claimed to have been her husband in a parallel universe—made her response absurd. It was as though she couldn’t believe she was speaking the words.
“Okay. We’re right behind you,” Old-timer replied. He turned back to Djanet. “You make a fine point though. If she’s not leading us to Venus, then why is she using Jules’s body to get there?”
“That was my point!” Djanet said, happy Old-timer was listening to reason. “The android armada is spread out across the solar system. There’s got to be a closer body she could jump to!”
Old-timer considered this for a moment before he turned back and looked at the massive constructor ship, now in it’s final death throes, resembling a crushed aluminum can, half of the crumpled form having been consumed by V-SINN. “Unless…” he began a thought before pausing.
“Unless…?” Djanet prompted him to finish.
“Think about the complexity of a system required to store the patterns of every assimilated person from all of the parallel universes they’d traveled to. More than a trillion lives. Jules told us the Constructor was where ninety-nine percent of their bodies were built. What if it also stored all of the android patterns.”
Djanet’s eyes flashed with understanding. “Dear God. You’re right. The Constructor makes the most sense. You’d store the patterns in the same place you build the bodies. And V-SINN just swallowed it whole.”
“Right,” Old-timer answered, “and if 1 was able to jump from body to body because she knew how to infiltrate the stored system—”
“Then she may’ve just lost that ability,” Djanet realized. “And we might’ve just seen the beginning of the end of the entire collective.”
“That fits with V-SINN’s M.O.,” Samantha confirmed. “Look, this whole situation has me turned upside down, but what I can tell you is, V-SINN never, ever makes mistakes—at least none that I’ve ever seen. V-SINN’s the pure distillation of game theory—mathematical strategy for its own benefit.”
Old-timer’s brow furrowed. “And now it’s set its sights on the androids. The enemy of thine enemy…” he whispered to himself. “Could it be?”
“Could what be?” Djanet asked.
Old-timer could hardly believe his next words, even before he said them. “I think 1 might be heading to Venus to acquire post-human help.”
8
Rich emerged from out of the roaring white of the gargantuan waterfall and entered the mist that reached up into the sky, the sun gleaming off its peak as though it were the peak of a snow-capped mountain. “Oh thank God!” Rich shouted.
“Where are you?” James asked.
“I think I came right out of the front of the falls,” Rich called out in return. “I’m climbing now and trying to get out of the mist.”