Free Echoes of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix

that if Peter Alander was the plant for the Frank Tipler, it might be Ali Genovese on the Frank Drake , or Caryl Hatzis on the Andre Linde. The plants themselves might not even know until the right circumstances occurred and the programming sprang into life.
    The worst thing was that she could see how it made sense. There was no other way the UNESSPRO managers could oversee the program once the probes left. This was their only way to protect against such catastrophes as mutinies, she supposed.
    But if Alander was the plant, why would he become active now? If anything, he was provoking dissent, not discouraging it.
    Maybe the failure of his engram lay at the heart of that mystery. Or not. As he himself had said, there had been plenty of opportunities for him to defy her in the past. Maybe his original had earned the respect of the other generalists by being smart enough to steal the overrides from UNESSPRO’s programmers and not use them until he’d had no other choice.
    Or perhaps he was right, and the Spinners were into everything. Maybe they had hacked directly into his mind and put the overrides there, along with the urge to use them, to go the tower. She was beyond being surprised by their actions, whoever they were. Although their adopted name suited them, given the manner in which they had appeared, spinning their threads like shining interstellar weevils, she couldn’t help but think of spiders instead: giant, malign intelligences drawing the human surveyors into a web they couldn’t even see.

    1.1.7

    “What are you thinking, Peter?”
    Cleo Samson’s voice brought Alander out of his deep reflection.
    “That it shouldn’t be me,” he said.
    “Visiting the Spinners, you mean?”
    “Yeah.” The shuttle was back on course, buffeting in the steadily worsening turbulence. “It should have been Lucia.”
    There was a slight pause. He felt Samson’s illusory body shift next to his in the darkness. The sensation insinuated itself into his mind with such intimacy that for a moment he was uncertain what she was even doing there. Had they had sex, he plugged into conSense and she immersed in her virtual world, thousands of kilometers away? And if so, how had she convinced him to do that, with everyone watching?
    But a second later the fear passed. There was no way, he realized, that he would have agreed to it, although it might have explained his state of mind.
    “It should have been Lucia,” he repeated solemnly. “Not me.”
    “Why?”
    “Because she was trained for this sort of thing. She’s used to working alone. And she’s willing to take risks I would judge unreasonable. She’s...” It was his turn to pause. “She’s a survivor, I guess.”
    “Even risk-takers fail eventually, Peter.”
    “What are you trying to say, Cleo?” he said irritably. “And what the hell are you doing here, anyway? Trying to lift my morale? Because if you are, you’re doing a piss-poor job of it, I can tell you.”
    “I just don’t think you should feel guilty about her, that’s all.”
    “I don’t feel guilty, Cleo.”
    “I think you do, Peter.”
    “That’s crap. Why should I? It wasn’t my decision. It was up to the assignment board.”
    “But you recommended her.”
    “So did you. We all did.”
    “But only you were sleeping with her.”
    “That’s irrelevant!”
    “No, it’s not,” she said. “Your emotions precluded you from being able to look at her objectively, as the rest of us were able to do. It was the right decision, Peter. Your personal attachment just doesn’t allow you to see that right now.”
    “I know it was the right decision, Cleo.” His tone started angry but was quickly tempered by the realization that what she was saying was true. “I just miss her sometimes, you know? She... Lucia...” The image of her was clear in his artificial recollection; he felt as though he could touch her if he reached out a hand. And with the right cross-matching of memory and sensory input, he