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Panting, Aloy reached out her hand to activate the console—which closed and rotated back down into the floor.
“No!” She tried to hold onto it, keep it from disappearing, but it implacably pulled away. She beat on it with her fists a few times, which didn’t do any good, of course. Damn.
“MINERVA, I need the console.” She looked around the red-lit room. “Please!”
When MINERVA responded, she forced herself to still, her heart to slow. This was critical. She had to convince the subfunction that it was in its interest to allow Aloy to insert the kernel, in its interest to merge with GAIA. Easier to take down a Thunderjaw, she thought to herself, but there was no turning back now.
Maybe she’d gotten better at diplomacy over the past weeks, having to deal with Studious Vuadis and Commander Nozar and the Utaru’s Chorus. Or maybe it was just that MINERVA was isolated and in pain, its desperation leading it to reach for the hope Aloy offered.
The console rotated back up out of the floor. Aloy stepped toward it. “Thank you, MINERVA,” she breathed. It had worked. It would work. She would restore GAIA.
She jammed in the override module on the end of her spear, and when the traceries of blue light faded back into the console, she spoke the words that had become her entry code to the artifacts of the Old World, the words that identified her as the genetic legacy of the woman who had been at the heart of the destruction and the restoration that had created her. “Elisabet Sobeck. Alpha Prime.”
A stylized image of Elisabet in swirls of blue-green light appeared in front of her, and a mechanical voice, seeming to come from the domed walls of the room itself, spoke. “Master override activated. Restoring MINERVA function to original code.”
Finally. Aloy took a breath, stepped forward, and slotted the glowing yellow GAIA kernel into the console. The air over the central pedestal shimmered and gradually took on the shape of—
“Oh, no,” she said. “No, no, no.”
“Well, this is interesting,” drawled the image in the center of the room. A pale man with his hair up in a knot, the sides of his head shaved, and a big grin on his face. She recognized his face from holograms, his voice from countless audio datapoints she’d played through her Focus as she had explored the ruins she’d encountered on her travels.
Travis Tate.
She let out her breath, her mind racing. What had happened? “I guess interesting is one word for it.” Though not the one she’d have chosen. “I thought that was a GAIA kernel.”
“Nope! Just a little window dressing I put on for security. Nice try, though.” He cocked his head. “Hey, you look like Lis! Guess she musta had some friends after all.”
“You can...see me?”
Travis Tate’s image waved a hand. “Don’t get bent out of shape. It’s just an analogy. Seeing as how—heh, no pun intended—I don’t actually have any eyes. But we got to have eyes everywhere, right? So you can bet I made sure our facilities were outfitted with the tippy-top of the line electronic sensors. And I can sense that you look an awful lot like Lis. In fact,” he added, his eyes narrowing slightly, “your gene code is telling me you are Lis. Except you’re younger, and your voice is a tad different, and Lis would jump off a building before doing her hair like that or wearing something that exposed her navel. So much for ‘abandoning’ the Lightkeeper Protocol.”
Aloy shook her head. Maybe half of what he said made sense; this was almost as aggravating as talking with Sylens. “What I mean is, you’re not just a hologram. This isn’t a recording, because you’re responding to what I say. But you can’t be Travis Tate, he—” Abruptly she broke off. Maybe she shouldn’t mention the part where Ted Faro killed all the Alphas.
“He what, exactly? Wait, no, let me get there on my own. Judging by your very interesting outfit and the state of this regional control center, I’m gonna guess some time has passed since we put together Zero Dawn. Though I’m not sure whether it worked or not, since you’re obviously Elisabet’s clone, not out of a Cradle.”
“Both. I’m Elisabet’s clone, and GAIA made me in a Cradle.”
Travis nodded, looking thoughtful. “It’s what, a few hundred years down the road now?”
“Over a thousand. According to the logs I recovered. And yeah, it worked.” She shrugged. “Mostly.”
“Whoo-ee. So what you were gonna say is that I’m dead, which it’s awfully nice of you to be concerned about, but I did not expect more than my allotted threescore and ten. And you’re right that I am not the original, one hundred percent flesh-and-blood Travis Tate, but—” he held up a finger “—I am a computer matrix containing an uploaded copy of Travis Tate’s mind, which you have very kindly plugged into this facility. Considering that the flesh and blood has returned to the dust from whence it came, I would say that, for all practical purposes, I am indeed Travis Tate. And you?”
“I’m Aloy.”
“A-loy,” said Travis, as though he were rolling her name around in his mouth, wondering if it might taste good. “Interesting name. And who are your friends?”
“My friends?”
He gestured behind her, and she turned to see the door slide open. Varl and Zo stepped hesitantly into the room.
“That doesn’t look like the goddess,” said Varl.
Travis snorted. “Definitely not a goddess. My mama would slap you silly for that blasphemy.”
“Turns out that wasn’t a GAIA kernel,” Aloy said to Varl. “That, apparently, is Travis Tate.”
Varl nodded slowly. “I remember his picture in that building we went into. The, uh, Far Zenith Data Center? The voice said they had to be especially careful not to alert Travis Tate.”
“Did they, now. Well, I believe I am duly alerted.” He looked amused. “And what were you doing in the Far Zenith Data Center?”
“We were looking for GAIA,” said Aloy. “We saw your message about setting up a fake GAIA for them to steal.”
“So you came to LATOPOLIS to find the GAIA test kernels. Surprise!”
She recalled what he had said earlier. “You replaced them with an uploaded copy of your mind. So where did the GAIA backups go?”
“That’s the question, ain’t it.” He looked pointedly over her shoulder. “If you want an answer, you better tell me who’s asking, and why.”
“Hello, Travis Tate,” said Zo, pushing her way past Aloy and Varl. Her chin was raised and she looked the hologram of Travis Tate straight in the eye. “I’m Zo, and this is Varl.”
Aloy was impressed at her aplomb. She’d only given her the Focus hours before, when they’d entered the cave leading to this facility.
“Well, hello there, darling.” Travis grinned, but Aloy could sense Varl stiffening beside her. “So, these are our true Cradle babies, repopulating the restored Earth? I like!”
“What?” Varl and Zo turned to Aloy, confusion on their faces.
“Look, Travis. Don’t overwhelm them, please? They don’t have a lot of experience with things like, well...you. The Cradles stopped working long ago. We’re just ordinary people now. Ordinary tribes. And the Earth, well. We’re trying to restore it. It’s a long story.” Saying the words reminded her of her mission, of her urgency. “Wait a minute. MINERVA only let me use the console because I said it could merge with GAIA. But it was you in the kernel. Travis, where’s MINERVA?”
“Right here in my pocket, darling.” Travis patted his side with a hand. “Metaphorically speaking. I’ve put a big fat firewall up around MINERVA’s code while I get my feet under me and figure out if I should assist you fine folks...or maybe just blow you to bits.”
“Also metaphorically speaking?”
“Uh-uh-uh, I wouldn’t count on it, Aloy. Even if you do look like Lis. I wouldn’t put anything past those Far Zenith a-holes.”
Aloy nodded slowly, thinking of the other Elisabet Sobeck clone she’d seen in the HADES lab with the Zeniths. At least she knew Travis Tate wasn’t on their side. Hopefully he'd be on hers. “Fair. I wouldn’t want them to get hold of GAIA, either. So how can we convince you to help us?”
“You mentioned a long story,” said Travis, folding his arms across his chest. “Been a while since I’ve heard a story.”
“You trust him?” asked Varl. They were sitting on the benches in the Base’s central room.
“I don’t know. This is everything I know about him.” She tapped her Focus and sent Varl and Zo copies of the datapoints she’d encountered that mentioned him, all of the hologram and audio records, all of the text logs. “Elisabet trusted him. I’m not sure she liked him, but she trusted him.”
Zo’s brow furrowed and her mouth twisted as she concentrated on retrieving the data Aloy had sent. Her hand moved across the space in front of her as she manipulated the virtual interface. “I don’t see how you keep track of all this.”
“You’ll get used to it. It just takes practice.”
“Took me a while, and I still mix things up,” said Varl.
“Yeah, but she’s smarter, she’ll pick it up faster.”
“Ouch.” There was only mock-hurt in his voice, and Aloy felt an unaccustomed warm feeling in her chest. She’d been annoyed after Varl had caught up with her at Barren Light; fixing the world was her job, her responsibility, and it was easier to be on her own and not have to worry about anybody else. But he had saved her life, probably, after she’d been washed out of the HADES facility. And Zo never hesitated to step forward when something needed to be done. She had to admit that it was good to have them around.
“Be quiet, I can’t do this with you two squabbling.” Zo’s hand moved again as she accessed another log. “It looks to me as though this Travis Tate made a lot of trouble for the people he worked with.”
“That I did, darling.” Travis’s voice seemed to come from all around them, making Varl and Zo jump.
“He can hear us?”
“Sorry, Zo, I should have showed you how to activate privacy mode.” She leaned over to demonstrate.
“It don’t matter, I can still hack in,” said Travis cheerfully. “After all, I am the most talented and least scrupulous programmer on Earth.”
“You’re the only programmer on Earth,” said Aloy. “And you’re a computer.”
“Uh-uh-uh, not a computer, Aloy. My software’s just as human as you are, even if I’m running on different hardware. Now GAIA, behind that fancy Mama-Earth light show, that’s just a program. Advanced and powerful, yeah, but it’s all just code.”
“Which we need to restore the biosphere and stop the land from dying. And which we still don’t have.”
“Well, I can fix that. Or at least I can direct you to where you can find a GAIA kernel. You gotta do the hard part of getting to it and getting it back.”
“Great. Just point the way, then.”
“Hold on, little lady. I think we got to get a few things straight first.”
She could feel the anger boiling up inside her. “What things? The Earth is dying and we’re racing against time here! If you hadn’t stolen the GAIA kernel and—”
Abruptly the lights went out and a blast of loud noise rippled through the room, silencing her.
“Now listen up,” said Travis Tate, his voice booming around the room. “Number one, I didn’t steal the GAIA kernels. HADES was my baby, and the LATOPOLIS facility was my workshop. That meant the kernels were mine to do with what I thought best. Number two, what I thought best was to keep them far, far away from the Far Z-Nuts. You gonna argue with that?”
“I got into the HADES lab before they did! I could have had it!”
“Maybe you could have, yeah. But from what you told me, they almost had you.” The lights came back on. “Zero Dawn hired me as a security consultant because I know security. Now, there’s lots of kinds of security when it comes to software. Problem is, you build a lock, someone’s gonna figure out how to crack it, and then you need a bigger lock. Then they crack that one, and you’re right back where you started. That’s where the old shell game comes in.”
“Shell game?”
It was Varl, surprisingly, who spoke. “You let someone see where you hide something, so they think they know where it is. Then you move it somewhere else when they’re not looking.”
“Well, that surely does restore my faith in humanity,” said Travis. “Over a thousand years later, people still doing the shell game.”
Aloy turned to Varl and raised an eyebrow.
“Erend told me about it—after he used it to win a few shards off me.”
Well, that explained that. “So you moved GAIA to another Zero Dawn facility?”
“Now why would I do that? First place—well, the next place they’d look. Nah, I hid the kernels away but good.”
“And you’re going to tell us where?”
“I want something from you first. Let me download your Focus, Aloy. I want to see what’s been happening in this world since I uploaded myself to this computer matrix just before we Alphas evacuated to GAIA Prime. Sounds like you’ve explored a whole lot of our old sites, recorded a lot of our old logs.”
“Why are you bothering to ask? Since you’re ‘the most talented and least scrupulous programmer on Earth’? You could just do it, right?”
“Oh yeah, I totally could, Aloy, you can bet your sweet little bow and arrow on that. But I’m gonna be nice and ask for permission. Personal reasons.”
She remembered one of the audio logs she’d found in GAIA Prime. Travis Tate had left it by the hologram memorial to Elisabet, after she’d sacrificed herself to save the rest of the Alphas. It had been gene-locked to Elisabet, so probably he hadn’t expected anyone would ever hear it. But she had the same genes, so she’d played the log. And she’d heard the affection and gratitude in his voice as he spoke to Elisabet’s memory. He’d cared about her. All the flippancy with which he treated everybody else had vanished. So maybe some of those feelings carried over to her.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “All right. Um—there are some things you’re not going to like.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s not gonna be a whole lot I do like, Aloy.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re right,” she muttered, toggling her Focus.
“I’ll get in touch if I’ve got questions,” he said. “In the meantime, have some coordinates.”
Varl came to the workshop while she was finishing up one last batch of acid arrows. “Ready when you are, Aloy.”
“Well. Um. Actually.” Should have slipped off while they weren’t looking and just crafted what I needed on the trail.
“Actually you don’t want me and Zo to come along.”
“Varl, it’s not that I—look, I’m just faster traveling alone, okay? And I don’t trust Travis Tate, and if you’re listening, Travis, I don’t care if you know that. But I’d feel better if someone stayed here.”
“All right. As it happens, we figured you’d want to head out on your own, so I’m going to head back toward Barren Light and get Erend. Zo wanted to stay here anyway to learn what she could about the Old World.”
“From Travis Tate?”
Varl grinned. “Maybe I don’t trust him, but I do trust Zo. She’ll be fine.”
The coordinates that Travis Tate had given her were all well southeast of the Base, so she and Varl descended to the edge of the Utaru lands together to a good camping spot they’d both used before. The next morning, Aloy overrode a couple of Chargers for their separate journeys.
“Can you do another for Erend?”
“No point. Without someone riding the machine, the override will wear off before you get even close to Barren Light. And no, I’m not giving you my spear, Varl. Maybe you can ride double.”
He snorted. “I think a Charger would be staggering under just his weight, let alone with both of us. Anyway, at least I’ll get there faster this way,” he said, and vaulted onto the Charger’s back. “See you back at the Base.”
She watched him gallop eastward for a few moments, then mounted her own machine and took to the south road. She had to admit she had mixed feelings about bringing Erend to the Base. Another person she’d have to take into account while planning how to find the subfunctions they’d need to put GAIA back together—assuming she found a kernel. But he was a good fighter and had the mechanical skills all Oseram learned as children. And now that she knew that there were many Oseram out here in the Forbidden West, it might be useful to have one of their countrymen around if she needed to do any negotiations.
She was musing on these things when her Focus pinged.
“I knew Teddy-boy was a grade-A unmitigated sociopathic piece of work, but I gotta say, I did not see that coming. Guess Lizzy didn’t need to seal up GAIA Prime after all.”
Travis Tate. “I take it you got to the part where he vented the atmosphere.”
“And here I thought I would have just plum died of boredom in that icebox once I ran out of porn and death metal. Not sure if I should thank him, or what.”
“Are you serious? He deleted APOLLO! He killed you all!”
“Now, now, don’t get your cute little animal-hide panties in a twist, Aloy, it’s all water under the bridge at this point. The man’s responsible for the Faro Plague, right? Nothing’s gonna balance those scales. And by now he’s surely just as dead as the original TT, and you’re out here reclaiming the world. He lost, and Lis won.”
“Yeah, don’t know if that was winning,” she muttered. Talking about Elisabet going out to repair the GAIA Prime hatch servos had reminded her of that last transmission from her.
And Travis Tate must have realized it, because his voice gentled. “Aloy. She gave herself for us, and it don’t matter that we got screwed anyway. She did it because that’s the kind of person she was. Straight and true. I expect you’re not a whole lot different.”
Nothing to say to that. But it seemed he was done talking, because her Focus went quiet, and that was a good thing because as she rounded a bend she saw two Scroungers on the road ahead, and she was a better shot without distractions. A short volley of arrows scattered the sparkers and antennae across the ground, and a second volley finished the machines off. After picking up the salvageable parts, she continued down the road.
It wasn’t much farther to the first set of coordinates Travis had given her. As she turned off the main road and started up into the mountains, she realized that her surroundings looked familiar. Slowing her machine, Aloy checked her Focus. Sure enough, she was getting close to Cauldron MU. She shuddered reflexively; the Widemaw at the core had done some damage to her before she’d finally managed to bring it down. Fortunately she’d had a good stash of healing berries, but that hadn’t been fun.
She overlaid the coordinates for the GAIA kernel on her map. Frowning, she tapped her Focus. “Travis?”
He answered immediately. “Heya, Aloy! Looks like you’re just about there. See the cabin yet?”
“The cabin?”
“One of my old hide-outs. Used to sneak off to it when I got annoyed with the Betas, or when Lis got annoyed with me, or basically whenever I figured I’d best get out of yelling range for a while. Like the time I programmed HADES to roll around the lab chasin’ the techs, going, ‘I can smell your braaains!’ Or, get this—”
“It’s not there, Travis.”
“You ain’t there yet, it’s still up the hill some.”
“I’ve been here before. There’s a Cauldron in that spot. No cabin.” She sent him the map with the coordinates overlaid.
“A Cauldron, huh. One of those big ol’ machine factories HEPHAESTUS put up? Yeah, I bet it smashed that poor cabin to tinder. Well, it ain’t far to the next spot. And you know, it looks like you’re gonna go right past my old stompin’ grounds. Any chance you could take a tiny little detour into my lab and pick me up some of my backup files? Might come in handy.”
“I don’t know. I really need to get that GAIA kernel.”
“Won’t take long, I promise. Cross my heart ‘n pinkie swear.”
She rolled her eyes, not that he could see her. “Pretty sure it’s nothing but wreckage now. I did mention I collapsed the generator room wall, didn’t I?”
“Do me a solid, Aloy, take a little look? It ain’t out of your way.”
“Fine,” she said shortly. He was right, the road would take her by the entrance. And she probably shouldn’t overlook anything that might be useful. But it was late enough that she ought to just hole up here for the night—she could see the burnt logs of the campfire she’d set near the Cauldron’s entrance, might as well camp there again. “Tomorrow.”
She built up the fire to roast her dinner, a rabbit she’d taken down just after dealing with the Scroungers, and while it cooked she crafted a few arrows to replace the ones she’d used. After putting out a few traps just in case anything came by, she went to sleep.
In the morning she set out to the south again. Before long she could see the ruins of LATOPOLIS. the Old World site that had been Travis Tate’s test lab for HADES. “I’m here,” she told him through her Focus. “Heading in now.”
She passed the orb that had held HADES, now still and dead, and continued in to the facility The grapple points she’d pulled down were all still open, so crossing the stupid flooded room was less annoying than it had been the first time, anyway. Still annoying, though.
Finally she got to the gene-locked door. “Hold for Identiscan.” She waited.
“Error,” said the machine voice. “Structural failure prevents access.”
“You hear that, Travis? Sorry.”
“Oh, well, guess I’ll have to make do without Hot Nurses from Mars and Werewolf Debutante. Shame, though, that was the good stuff.”
She frowned. “Good stuff?”
“Premium pornography, Aloy. They don’t make holos like that any more. Even if anyone was still making holo-shows, which I imagine they ain’t got the equipment these days. Hey, maybe I can get Zo to take off that cute grass skirt of hers!”
“Don’t even think about it, Travis,” she growled, and stabbed at her Focus to cut the connection.
Well, it wasn’t far to the next set of coordinates he’d given her. The sooner she could get the GAIA kernel, the sooner she—and Zo—wouldn’t have to deal with Travis Tate.
But as she retraced her path across the platforms and pillars, she wondered: how exactly was that going to happen? They needed the computers built into the Base for GAIA and her subordinate functions. Would Travis be able to fit in there, too?
Would he even want to stay in there with GAIA?
Where else could he go?
Aloy jumped back on her Charger, which was still waiting by the outer door, and headed southeast. As evening fell she saw a lake ahead of her and brought up her map again. Jagged Deep, it was called. One arm of the lake stretched north, a sparkling map marker on its edge, and she zoomed in. It was Sylens’ workshop, the one built under the great arcing ruins of a Horus.
Wait a minute. She superimposed the coordinates for the GAIA kernel. Sure enough, the spot Travis Tate had marked was somewhere in that vast lake. Which meant she wasn’t getting that one, either.
She shouldn’t be surprised, Aloy thought to herself as she rode to a camping spot on the lakeshore. Probably a lot of the land had changed in a thousand years.
As she rotated the fish she’d speared so it would cook evenly on the fire, she thought about just how long a thousand years really was. Enough time for the Faro Plague to burn itself out, and for GAIA to make machines to remake everything that it had destroyed. Maybe all the places where Travis Tate had hidden the extra GAIA kernels were now under Cauldrons, or under lakes, or in the middle of camps run by Regalla’s rebels, or in similarly inaccessible places. Maybe in trying to save the GAIA backups, he’d inadvertently caused them all to be destroyed. And that would mean they’d never be able to restore GAIA and her subfunctions. They’d never be able to stabilize the biosphere.
She was staring into the fire, trying to come up with a reason to be hopeful, when her Focus alerted her.
“Zo?” She remembered what Travis had said back at LATOPOLIS. “Travis Tate isn’t making problems for you, is he?”
In her ear, Zo laughed. “Nothing I can’t handle. I lived in Plainsong, remember? I had plenty of experience making sure boys I wasn’t interested in didn’t get any ideas. He might make big talk, but without a body, there’s not much he can do!”
“Right, right. So. Is there something else wrong?”
“Everything’s fine, Aloy! But we were talking about food—it’s funny, he doesn’t have a body, but he likes to talk about food.”
“Probably it’s because he doesn’t have a body. People think a lot about what they can’t do, I guess.”
“True. And it’s an important part of a culture, you know, the type of meals we eat. So I told him about the food of the Utaru, about the beans and wheat we harvest and prepare, and he said he would give me instructions on making an Old World food, something called a bean boo-ree-toh.” She sounded out the unfamiliar word carefully. “It is best with something he calls sal-sah, which is made from the redthorn pepper. He said it grows in the desert, so if you see it, could you bring me back some?”
“Sure, I’ll keep an eye out. Glad you’re getting along.”
“It is interesting to hear about the Old World from someone who was there—I’m learning so much! So how is your search going—have you found what you are looking for?”
“Not yet.” She told Zo about the Cauldron and Jagged Deep, about all the ways the New World had overwritten the old. “But I’ve got one more set of coordinates. I’ll check them tomorrow. Cross your fingers the GAIA backup’s there.”
The coordinates took Aloy nearly due west, though she skirted the road once to avoid a large group of Leaplashers, and a second time to pick up more ridge-wood for making arrows. She picked some more medicinal berries as well, but didn’t see any pepper plants.
When she got back to the road she noticed, again, that her surroundings seemed familiar. A quick check of the map showed that she was retracing the route she’d taken with Talanah, when they were looking for her Carja friend.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she muttered to herself as she brought up the coordinates for the third GAIA backup. Yep, it looked like she was headed for the Spinebreak.
“Travis, did you put this one in a tunnel? Because if you did, we’re going to need another option.”
“A tunnel? Naw, that’s government territory. I was tryin’ to stay off the radar of Sterling-Malkeet or any of their paid goons—didn’t want to deprive Lis of my contribution to her little project, not to mention that it would deprive me of Elysium. Not that that happened, anyway. But anyway, it turns out the panel that covers the spotlight wiring access on the big old highway sign just before you get there? Well, it’s got a nice little hidey-hole behind it. Just the perfect size for a GAIA backup.”
She let out her breath. “All right, that’s good. Let’s see if it’s still there.”
She rode up toward the Spinebreak carefully, just in case any other machines had taken over the territory of the Shellsnapper she and Talanah had fought and killed, but other than a couple of Burrowers—easily handled with a couple of well-placed arrows—there was nothing. She figured the huge crumbling metal arch was the highway sign he had mentioned, and headed for one of its pillars.
The panel in its side was, amazingly, still tightly closed. She rummaged through her pack; yes, there was an ancient toothpick she had picked up somewhere and hadn’t yet had the chance to sell. Perfect. She slid one end into the crack between the panel and the pillar, and levered the metal until she’d made a gap, then moved it to another spot and repeated the action. Three times, and the crack had widened enough for her to lever it open entirely.
There it was, nestled in some crumpled coarse paper. She drew it out and marveled how even a thousand years hadn’t dimmed its faint yellow glow.
She tapped her Focus. “Zo, I’ve got it. I should be there in three days.”
Three days. And then she’d have GAIA again.
Aloy was setting up camp near Cauldron MU again when Varl’s voice came through her Focus. “Hey, Aloy. Just wanted to let you know Erend and I are on our way back.”
She calculated the distance he’d had to go. “You must not have had to go all the way to Barren Light, then.”
“No, he was heading west. We met up not far from that Utaru settlement where I took you, where we met Zo—Stone’s Echo, do you remember?”
“Hard to forget.”
“That’s true,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. Probably thinking about Zo. “Anyway, I needed to come here anyway to give Milu your message for Talanah, so we’re spending the night. Should make it back to the Base in another five days or so.”
She’d brought up her map and checked the distance. “Stay there. I can be there by midday tomorrow. I’ll override some Chargers for you two and we can all ride back together.”
“That sounds great, Aloy. Live long and prosper.”
“What?”
“Zo said it’s how they used to sign off transmissions in the Old World.”
“According to Travis Tate, I bet. Yeah, I haven’t heard that on any of the recordings. I think he’s just having fun with us.”
Varl sighed. “I would not doubt it. Anyway, we’ll see you tomorrow.”
She woke at first light and jumped right on the Charger, eating the leftover meat she’d saved from dinner as she rode, rather than taking the time to make a real breakfast. Stone’s Echo was only a little out of the way to the east, anyway, so it wouldn’t slow her down much, and it would get Varl and Erend back much sooner. They were going to have to figure out a way to get Travis Tate out of the system core so they could get GAIA in, and she wasn’t sure Travis would want to vacate. He’d been dead for over a thousand years; he probably didn’t want to go back to that state. Maybe having some more muscle around would help, if she needed it.
Erend was at the workbench when she got there, doing some maintenance on his warhammer, while Varl was in conversation with the hunting-goods merchant, but looked up as she came into the settlement. “Aloy! You made good time.”
“Well, I’m anxious to get back. And you probably are, too.”
Varl smiled. “I told Zo we’d be back sooner than expected. And also that maybe she shouldn’t believe everything Travis Tate tells her.”
“Looking forward to meeting this Old One,” said Erend. He looked back and forth between Varl and Aloy. “What?”
“Looking forward to seeing you meet him,” said Aloy. “I should say hello to Milu.”
“Oh, she headed out as soon as we told her about the Base. She knows a merchant who spends a lot of time in the mountains who can probably find Talanah and pass on the message.”
“All right, then. Let’s go find you some Chargers and head for the mountains ourselves.”
They camped near Plainsong that night, sharing stories of their separate travels by the campfire, and the next morning they climbed the cliffs to the Base.
“Pretty sweet place you got here,” said Erend, looking around as they went through the tunnel. “But what’s all this junk?”
“Uh-uh, don’t call it junk. Looks like Zo’s done some decorating,” said Varl.
“Yes, I got some things from Plainsong.” Zo was in the central area, working on some kind of projection from her Focus. She looked up. “Oh, hello, you must be Erend.”
“Yeah, Erend, that’s me. But what’s that?”
“I’ll get you a Focus and show you how to use it,” said Varl.
“Great,” said Erend, looking doubtful.
“You’ll be fine,” Aloy assured him.
“Did you find the redthorn peppers? I would like to make bean boo-ree-tohs with sal-sah for dinner.”
Aloy reached into her pack and found the small clump she’d picked. “Here you go, Zo. But maybe taste one first? They’re kind of spicy.”
Zo laughed. “That would not surprise me! I may use quite a bit less than Travis suggested.”
Aloy nodded, and tapped her Focus. “Hey, Travis? I’m back. Want to talk about what happens next?”
“Sure thing, Aloy, come on up and visit a while.”
“O-kay,” she said, looking around at the others, who were all looking at her. “I guess I’m going up to see Travis Tate.”
His hologram was there, standing in the middle of the circular room, and he grinned at Aloy as she walked in. “So you got the goods and you’re ready to restore the world.”
“Yeah.” She was acutely aware of the weight of the GAIA kernel in her backpack. Maybe it was the last backup that had survived. If Travis Tate decided he wanted to stay in that computer, maybe he’d try to destroy it. Maybe this had all been for nothing.
No, that was stupid. If he hadn’t wanted her to find a backup, he wouldn’t have given her the coordinates. And besides, if the systems of the earth fell apart, everything would stop working, including the computer system. “And what about you? Are you ready for me to put the GAIA kernel into the console?”
“Well, Aloy, it’s been interesting learnin’ about what happened since Teddy-boy screwed us all over.” He waved a hand and images appeared on the curved walls: she saw All-Mother Mountain, Meridian, rampaging Bristlebacks in the valley of the Daunt, the angled platters of Plainsong.
“You’ve been busy with my Focus records.” And not answering her questions.
“Your records, and this terraforming facility. ‘Course, I can’t do much with it, not being the program that was intended to operate it. But I’ve been poking around.”
The familiar places vanished from the walls, replaced by a map view from high up, like she was on the biggest Tallneck ever. At this distance, there wasn’t a whole lot of detail visible, but she could see lakes and mountains, and a strange sort of building in a desert.
“I looked at what you did in that Cauldron what smashed my old cabin. And some others, too—seems like you got some practice with those machine factories. And I was thinking that maybe you could do me one more favor.”
“We don’t have time!” Aloy felt herself getting hot, getting angry, and with effort she tamped it down. “It must have felt strange to wake up after a thousand years—I know you probably don’t want to lose this.” She waved her hand around. “But we need GAIA here. I’m sorry.”
“Now, who’s squawking around like a chicken with no head? Did I say anything about what I wanted yet? Why would you think I wanted to stay here under a mountain? Been there, done that, not my thing.”
“So what do you want?”
The map view on the walls rotated and zoomed in to a spot that seemed to be in a snowy forest, near some big mountains. She guessed it was somewhere to the north.
“I’ve been looking at the records of HEPHAESTUS’ factories. And I’ve got the mother of all bad ideas,” he said, grinning.
Zo, Varl, and Erend filed in through the door, and she waved them over to stand behind her. “All right, we’re trying this again. Ready, Travis?”
“See y’all on the flip side,” said Travis Tate’s hologram. He winked at Zo, who made a surprised little noise, and vanished from the central pedestal, his image replaced by the static blue-green security image of Elisabet. The console rotated up out of the floor in front of Aloy, and she stepped in front of it.
“Whoa,” said Erend. He tapped his new Focus uncertainly. “What is all this?”
“I have no idea,” said Varl.
Aloy took GAIA kernel from her pack and held it before the console. “Travis needs to transfer MINERVA to GAIA. Then he’s coming back out.” I hope, she added silently to herself, as she carefully slotted the glowing cylinder in place.
The synthetic voice spoke. “Do you wish to initiate heuristic matrix?”
“Here goes,” Aloy said, and pressed the button. The console retreated into the floor.
A swirl of golden fireflies took shape before them, slowly solidifying into the shape of GAIA.
“The goddess,” said Varl, sounding relieved.
“She’s beautiful,” said Zo.
“Greetings, Doctor Sobeck. No—it’s Aloy, isn’t it.” She cocked her head as though listening to something, and Aloy wondered if Travis Tate was communicating with her. He’d said he needed to release the subfunction MINERVA so it could reintegrate with the main GAIA program, but maybe there was more to it than that.
“She knows you?” said Erend.
“It’s a long story.”
“We have much to discuss, but initialization of my heuristic matrix will not be complete for several minutes more,” said GAIA. She closed her eyes and her image froze. The console rotated back up and the slot opened to reveal a golden machine kernel.
“Thanks, Travis,” said Aloy, removing the kernel.
“Will someone tell me what is going on?” asked Erend plaintively.
“We will all talk over dinner,” said Zo. “I hope you will like the bean boo-ree-tohs!”
some weeks later
Aloy put her hands on her knees, panting heavily. The Rollerback had been a tough machine to beat; no sooner did she shoot off its armor plates than they came flying back to reattach themselves, and staying out of the way of its tail took all her concentration and agility. But finally it blundered into one of her acid traps, and that gave her the opening she needed to land a few solid shots that took away the worst of its weapons. A few more shots, and it was over.
She stepped up to the Cauldron core and overrode it with the module on her spear, watching the glowing cables turn from red to blue, watching the override codes transfer to the module. When it was done, she replaced her spear on her back and took the machine kernel from her pack and turned it over in her hands.
“Here you go, Travis,” she said, as she plugged it into the Cauldron core. The blue cables flickered gold, then back to blue.
She stood there for a few moments, waiting for something else to happen. After a while, feeling silly, she collected the salvageable parts from the Rollerback and looked around the room. “Guess I’ve got to find my way out of here now,” she said to herself. “Uh, bye, Travis?”
There was no response.
“All right, then,” she said, and jumped down to the floor. There was a gap there, next to the core, and she squeezed through to find herself in a small room. “Guess I’ve got more Cauldron to go through.”
She had a lot more Cauldron to go through, and it took a while, but finally she was able to drop onto a newly-built Tallneck, release it from the mechanism that was holding it, and ride it out of the Cauldron and into the forest. She overrode it to add the map to her store of information, then rappelled down and watched it stride off.
some days later
The shelter near Salt Bite wasn’t big, but it was an ideal place to rest and recover from the ordeal of the Cauldron. Plus it had a workbench, so Aloy could upgrade her gear—which she was pretty happy about having done when she was in the forest collecting medicinal berries and ridge-wood and heard the heavy tread of a machine close by. Quietly, she stowed the berries in her pouch and the wood in her pack, then reached for her bow.
“Put that thing down,” said Travis Tate’s voice in her Focus, as a Clawstrider broke through the underbrush and stopped in front of her. The lights that were its eyes glowed blue.
She did not put that thing down. “That's you?”
The massive metal head nodded, which looked very weird, and slowly she stowed her bow. “So, it worked. I guess you're a Clawstrider. Do you have any, uh, Clawstrider plans?”
He turned his head and vented a cloud of fire—fortunately not in the direction of anything flammable. “Woo-hoo, pretty sweet! I'm lookin' forward to meetin' up with those Far Z-Nuts now.” The machine's massive legs bent as it—as Travis Tate—lowered itself into a crouch. “Now, you want a ride to the Base, or what?”