Orphans of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix Read Free Book Online Page B

she thought, the slow turning of the disk in his fingers was a gentle reminder of mortality.
    Eventually, he grunted his consent. “Whatever,” he said. “You’re getting hard to tell apart, so I guess it makes no real difference to me who comes along.”
    He let go of the rail and stalked off through the habitat, perhaps assuming that this would put him beyond her observational range. It didn’t, of course, but she chose not to go with him.
    Returning to herself, to her self-imposed isolation in the hole ship Arachne, she looked down at her hands, where they lay folded in her lap. They were flesh and blood, or the closest thing to it that had survived the Spike in Sol system; they weren’t composed of cells grown in a soup and assembled en masse, differentiating as they went. She was human.
    That set her apart from all the others. She felt it keenly. As much as she played it down when she encouraged them to work together, the truth was impossible to ignore: she was the product of 150 years of experience and biological technology a century in advance of anything UNESSPRO had had. She simply wasn’t the same as them.
    But Alander had the gall to suggest that he couldn’t tell them apart...?
    She smiled. Ah, she thought, realizing: An insult. That was good. He wouldn’t normally resort to personal attacks when he couldn’t get what he wanted. The fact that he had this time suggested she must have been getting to him. Was it the argument, she wondered, or the randomizing of his thoughts she had introduced? Either way, it was an interesting development.

    * * *

    Sol uploaded the change of plans the moment Thor arrived in the secondary dock. Thor wasn’t happy about it.
    “This is bullshit, Sol,” she said, trying to keep a lid on her annoyance but failing. “I didn’t come all this way to baby-sit.”
    “Try to think of the bigger picture, Thor.” The original Hatzis’s voice was placating. “It makes more sense this way.”
    Thor glowered at the image that came with the words via conSense. The Caryl Hatzis who had survived Sol had done so with a grace her UNESSPRO engrams had never known. She was slimmer, her skeleton was better structured, and she carried herself with confidence. Compared to the circus freak body Thor had been decanted into, she looked like perfection, damn her.
    But envy aside, Sol was right. It made sense that she should go with Alander. It also made sense that she be mobile in the same way he was. It was just her bad luck that she had drawn the short straw.
    “No word from Athena yet?” she asked, deliberately moving on from the subject. Sol had told her about the message they’d received from Head of Hydras on her arrival. She hadn’t heard the transmission from the dying colony while in transit.
    “Gou Mang should be there soon,” said Sol. “Before you leave, why not wait with me over here for news? Then, if we do need to broadcast instructions, you can make a detour along the way.”
    With the lack of anything better to do, Thor accepted Sol’s invitation and made her way from her own hole ship to Arachne.
    The Sothis habitat was spacious and airy compared to the underground structures her crewmates were building on their colony world. Thor was mainly ocean, apart from two diamond-shaped continents and a smattering of islands. The storms were ferocious. She had thought she might welcome Sothis’s arid bleakness, but she was already finding herself missing the distant howl of the wind and moisture in the air. Here the air smelled of nothing but mummification.
    Arachne was identical to the vessel she had flown from HD92719. It had the same cockpit interior, right down to its smell. The AI, when it spoke, had the same voice. She experienced an odd feeling of jamais vu as she walked through the airlock to find someone different there, as though returning to a home she now found unfamiliar. Her original was sitting on the couch in exactly the same pose as the image she’d seen in