Tales of Old Earth Read Online Free PDF

Know.”
    Now her emotions returned to her in full force. She wanted to run and scream and break things. Only there wasn’t anything in sight that hadn’t already been broken. “You shithead!” she cried. “You idiot machine! What use are you? What goddamn use at all?”
    â€œCan give you. Eternal life. Communion of the soul. Unlimited processing power. Can give Burton. Same.”
    â€œHah?”
    â€œAfter the first death. There is no other. Dylan Thomas.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    Silence.
    â€œDamn you, you fucking machine! What are you trying to say?”
    Then the devil took Jesus up into the holy city and set him on the highest point of the temple, and said to him, “If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written he shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up.”
    Burton wasn’t the only one who could quote scripture. You didn’t have to be Catholic, like her. Presbyterians could do it too.
    Martha wasn’t sure what you’d call this feature. A volcanic phenomenon of some sort. It wasn’t very big. Maybe twenty meters across, not much higher. Call it a crater, and let be. She stood shivering at its lip. There was a black pool of molten sulfur at its bottom, just as she’d been told. Supposedly its roots reached all the way down to Tartarus.
    Her head ached so badly.
    Io claimed—had said—that if she threw herself in, it would be able to absorb her, duplicate her neural patterning, and so restore her to life. A transformed sort of life, but life nonetheless. “Throw Burton in,” it had said. “Throw yourself in. Physical configuration will be. Destroyed. Neural configuration will be. Preserved. Maybe.”
    â€œMaybe?”
    â€œBurton had limited. Biological training. Understanding of neural functions may be. Imperfect.”
    â€œWonderful.”
    â€œOr. Maybe not.”
    â€œGotcha.”
    Heat radiated up from the bottom of the crater. Even protected and shielded as she was by her suit’s HVAC systems, she felt the difference between front and back. It was like standing in front of a fire on a very cold night.
    They had talked, or maybe negotiated was a better word for it, for a long time. Finally Martha had said, “You savvy Morse code? You savvy orthodox spelling?”
    â€œWhatever Burton. Understood. Is. Understood.”
    â€œYes or no, damnit!”
    â€œSavvy.”
    â€œGood. Then maybe we can make a deal.”
    She stared up into the night. The orbiter was out there somewhere, and she was sorry she couldn’t talk directly to Hols, say good-bye and thanks for everything. But Io had said no. What she planned would raise volcanoes and level mountains. The devastation would dwarf that of the earthquake caused by the bridge across Lake Styx.
    It couldn’t guarantee two separate communications.
    The ion flux tube arched from somewhere over the horizon in a great looping jump to the north pole of Jupiter. Augmented by her visor it was as bright as the sword of God.
    As she watched, it began to sputter and jump, millions of watts of power dancing staccato in a message they’d be picking up on the surface of Earth. It would swamp every radio and drown out every broadcast in the Solar System.
    THIS IS MARTHA KIVELSEN, SPEAKING FROM THE SURFACE OF IO ON BEHALF OF MYSELF, JULIET BURTON, DECEASED, AND JACOB HOLS, OF THE FIRST GALILEAN SATELLITES EXPLORATORY MISSION. WE HAVE MADE AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY …
    Every electrical device in the System would dance to its song.
    Burton went first. Martha gave the sledge a shove and out it flew, into empty space. It dwindled, hit, kicked up a bit of a splash. Then, with a disappointing lack of pyrotechnics, the corpse slowly sank into the black glop.
    It didn’t look very encouraging at all.
    Still …
    â€œOkay,” she said. “A deal’s a deal.”