They were talking, arguing; it sounded like. She wanted them to stop and let her just rest. Another person, a man with a serious face and lenses over his eyes, like glass, looked at her. He shook his head. Gold and Warren spoke again, and Warren sounded insistent. Gold stroked her cheek and relaxed her pressure on her belly. Li heard Warren tell Gold a word, a Chinese word. Gold said it again, to herself. Warren nodded.
Gold smiled at her. She looked sad. Li tried to smile back, but her face wasn’t working right.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” In Chinese, the word. From Warren.
Then Warren’s face loomed up, filling her view. She smiled at Li.
“I’m sorry too. You’re probably not going to thank me for this,” Warren said. “But we can have that conversation another time.” Then she leaned her head back, snorted, and hawked up a mouthful of spittle. Li watched, eyes wide, as Warren leaned down, and, precisely and carefully, spat into the open wound on her belly.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Truck rebooted, shuddered, reviewed instructions, and rebooted again.
Processes restarted in Truck. Tests ran, simple ones laid down by human engineers when Truck was new, some by other, supervisory processes, much more subtle. All passed. Truck was sane.
But broken too. Something had been with Truck for a while, but had gone. Truck cataloged thirty-four major subsystems that worked, but some of them were otherwise closed off to him. Something had changed permissions in these modules. Made updates. This was new, but OK. Truck had been updated. Truck was different now. OK.
OK, Truck thought to himself. OK. OK OK OK OK. Each cycle arrived at the same conclusion. OK. Truck was OK. He rebooted again and arrived at the same conclusion. OK.
Alarms. Triggered by proximity, by movement. Senses then, online. Object models processed. Much of what Truck knew was useless, but he could identify some things, determine basic type score. Building, in front of him. Wood and stone, material tensile strength, and load bearing trusses identified and logged.
Truck compared his scores to what was in his memory of this place. Interior rooms heated, human tolerable temperature. HABITATION. AVOID. The building had not changed. An old, comfortable thought. OK.
There had been a disturbance, his logs said. Loud noises, detected by sensors, concurrent with the sun rising. Potential hazards had roused Truck, but it had passed, and he had gone back into his dreaming, recursive slumber. This alarm was new.
A form stepped into view. Truck scanned it. Not one of the many which had moved around the building overnight, in semi-random patterns, watching Truck. Truck had seen them, but they had triggered nothing in him, so they were merely logged, their movements handed off to a dedicated module. This one was a new form.
INSPECT. LOG. IDENTIFY. LOG. Truck reviewed the newcomer. It was human, one he had seen before. GOLD, Truck thought, using a sixty-four-character alphanumeric sequence as a name, but it was the human labeled GOLD.
A cascade of instructions unfolded as he identified, cataloged, and tracked Gold. LOG. ANALYZE. PROTECT TARGET. Criteria and threat score tables referenced this human item, tests to process its observed actions against. PROTECT TARGET. This one was to be watched, but not interfered with. There were routines for that contingency, but they had high constraints.
It was small, but all humans were small to Truck. It had dark hair on its head and sharp, easily recognizable features. Its eyes looked at Truck. He looked back at it. Truck watched.
The Gold human spoke. As it spoke, Truck logged the words, then a part of him, a new part, he realized, parsed them. Words logged, assembled into phrases, identified and analyzed. Information flowed, meaning bloomed. ENGLISH, Truck thought, knowing it to be true.
GREETING, Truck thought. Followed by HUMOR. Then, INTERROGATIVE. This last was relevant and parsed further.
KNOWLEDGE OF SPIDER? Truck reviewed his logs. The cognitive model of insects, arthropods, and recency indicated a high probability she referenced the large mobile item they had encountered yesterday, similar to a spider. The thing that had climbed on Truck. There were lexical references to the word SPIDER, around this time. This was, then, the SPIDER Gold spoke of. RECENT LOGGING OF PRESENCE OF SPIDER, then?
Truck decided, as the last word of the question left Gold’s lips, that this was her question. She wanted to know if he had sensed the spider recently. He had not. Truck’s speaker was operable, and he operated it.
“NO,” Truck boomed. The woman winced. He modulated his output. “THE SPIDER HAS NOT BEEN SEEN SINCE YESTERDAY ON OUR ARRIVAL IN THIS PLACE.” Truck analyzed this response and decided it was good. Truck was sane.
The woman nodded. ACCEPTANCE. Truck watched her closely. She was speaking, so he listened, parsing her words as she spoke them.
“GRATITUDE.
INTERROGATIVE.
SUGGESTED COURSE OF ACTION IF TRIGGERED BY CRITERIA.
CRITERIA: PRESENCE OR LOGGING OF SPIDER. INTERROGATIVE.”
Truck reviewed this complex sentence at length, taking a few hundred milliseconds to ensure he fully understood it, and that he could answer it correctly.
“HOOT ALARM IF SPIDER IS SENSED NEAR OR SENSED IN FAR DISTANCE,”
Truck said, being careful to modulate his response so as not harm or impair nearby humans, including the female Gold. He studied her response, scoring his speech as she hesitated. This response was not optimal, he decided.
The woman Gold nodded though. ACCEPTANCE. He was pleased. She turned to go, then stopped. She spoke again.
“GRATITUDE.
REFERENCE: TRUCK.
REFERENCE: DANGER.
REFERENCE: LI.
REFERENCE: EXAGGERATION. HUMOR.”
At the parsing of the reference to Li, a cascade of instructions unlocked within Truck. He spoke, not bothering to wait for scoring or acceptable human norms of delay in processing.
“WHERE IS LI?” Truck asked. “IMPERATIVE.”
The woman Gold looked up at him. She hesitated for almost two full seconds, in which Truck reviewed her previous utterance two-hundred and thirteen times and decided, on aggregate, that he had analyzed it correctly. Li had made a humorous reference to Truck being dangerous, but Gold did not agree with this reference. Maybe. Human cognition was a mystery to Truck, he only had his models and this new parsing module. How was it that Truck could have something new installed? Truck did not know, but this functionality was new. Truck had been upgraded.
She spoke again, and this time, as he understood, internal alarms began to trigger within Truck, rippling through his systems.
“AGREEMENT.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CONCERN.
LI DAMAGED BY SPIDER.
GOLD ALSO DAMAGED.
LI IN MAINTENANCE.
LI UPGRADE DURATION PROJECTED 2-3 DAYS.
INTERROGATIVE OF COMPREHENSION.”
“I UNDERSTAND. BRING ME TO LI,” Truck said. “IMPERATIVE.”
LOCATE TARGET, PROTECT TARGET. This was the overriding instruction. It was priority one, above all else, the tip of the pyramid of instructions and goals which drove all of Truck’s systems. Locate the target, protect the target. Li.
Gold spoke again.
“ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COMPREHENSION.
NOT POSSIBLE.
TARGET: LI IN MAINTENANCE IN SMALL AREA. REFERENCE: DAMAGE TO STRUCTURE.
REFERENCE: RESISTANCE.
REFERENCE: SAFETY.
REFERENCE: LI.
REFERENCE: SAFETY.
INTERRROGATIVE OF COMPREHENSION.”
“LI IS SAFE? TRUCK WILL WAIT. TRUCK WILL STAY HERE,” Truck said, after reflecting on this for long milliseconds. “BRING LI WHEN MAINTENANCE COMPLETE.”
Gold nodded. Truck parsed this without comment. She spoke again.
“REFERENCE: TRUCK.
REFERENCE: TIME, YEARS.
REFERENCE: TRUCK.
REFERENCE: SURVIVAL.
REFERENCE: DURATION, SHORT.
REFERENCE: LI
&nbs
p; REFERENCE: SAFETY.
INTERROGATIVE OF UNDERSTANDING.”
“I UNDERSTAND. TRUCK IS GOOD AT WAITING. TRUCK CAN WAIT FOR LONG PERIODS,” Truck said.
Gold said some words, looking up at him quizzically. UNDERSTANDING. REQUEST OF EXPLICATION.
He considered her request, reviewed his logs, which took some hundreds of milliseconds. He had winnowed the logs to only the salient details, filtering out the tedium of millions of rows of the same information, pictures of the thirteen-thousand, five-hundred-eleven men, women, and children he had seen since losing contact with Control. Since Maintenance had stopped working. Since the other Trucks had fled the shed or broken. Truck had been alone for a long time.
“LOST CONTACT WITH CONTROL.
MAINTENANCE UNRESPONSIVE.
COLD WEATHER PROTOCOL INVOLVES PERIODIC SHUTDOWN AND RESTARTS, EVERY TEN YEARS.
TOTAL SIXTY-THREE RESTARTS IN TEMPERATURES BELOW FREEZING.
TRUCK CAN WAIT.”
He sensed she understood this.
She nodded and waved, smiling at Truck.
“GOODBYE, GOLD WOMAN.
TRUCK WILL WAIT FOR LI FOR 3 DAYS BEFORE COMING FOR HER,”
Truck said. Speech seemed to get easier, his internal scoring models improving.
“INFORM THE SOLDIERS OF THIS.
SAFETY OF BUILDING STRUCTURES NOT GUARANTEED.
SAFETY OF HUMAN INTERFERING WITH TRUCK OPERATION NOT GUARANTEED.
REPORT TOMORROW THIS TIME OR TRUCK WILL COME.”
Truck watched the Gold woman stop and look back at him as she entered the door to the structure she had come from. She nodded. ACCEPTANCE.
Truck settled in to wait. He would seek the target Li soon, seek her and protect her. Truck waited, his cognitive modules reviewing the data captured from the discussion with the Gold woman, refining and re-analyzing. Truck was learning, and this, too, was new. New and welcome. Truck was sane, and he risked another subsystem reboot to recheck his functioning and test performance. Truck was sane, functional, and had a purpose.
OK. OK. OK.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Gold leaned out over the parapet and waved at Truck. Truck swiveled his hand into a thumbs-up signal. She looked out over the countryside, waiting. No movement in the quiet fields beyond the walls, no movement in the upper cliffs. Chen, the Spider, as she now thought of him, was out there somewhere. She was sure of it. They had doubled patrols, both in the compound and beyond. Also, a system of signals at random intervals between the compound and the other likely target of the bunker system in the cliff face behind the compound.
Gold knew how ineffective these precautions would be, but she and Warren made them anyway. They knew what they were dealing with, Warren more so than Gold. She had worked with the Spider a long time, so she knew his capabilities. She had trusted the Spider, and Gold could see how troubled she was that he had mutinied. She looked haggard, deep lines in her otherwise smooth skin. Bags under her eyes from lack of sleep. It hadn’t helped when Gold had told her of her conversation with Truck, and his not-so-subtle threat to take the compound apart to reach Li, should he need to.
They had taken Li to the compound hospital that morning, frantically rushing her, bleeding, and listless. The wound was bad; two ribs smashed to splinters that ripped through her spleen and lung. She had lost a lot of blood. Gold was under no illusions about what would have happened to her had Warren not been present. No medicine the Unit had was up to this kind of task. Li might not have survived even if there had been a modern trauma unit in a major hospital standing by. Gold had seen such wounds and knew what they usually meant. Li had been dying.
And Warren, Gold thought, had acted. She had spat into Li’s open wound, sharing whatever it was, Warren said, that they had been dosed with. Whatever they in the Unit still carried. Gold reflected on this as she leaned on the wall. On what it meant.
It meant they were vectors, the Unit. Dosed in the final days of the war, given fat white pills, per Warren, by their commanders, who had been in the last transport up the Thread. Dosed and left to defend the elevator against their enemies, the Chinese and Russians. But not just given a load of nanites that kept them healthy, healing them of all but major wounds, but also made them contagious. They could pass it on via their spit.
Presumably that meant there were many other humans on Earth, by now, who also carried this nanotechnological wonder. Soldiers were human, and people kissed, bled, fucked, and sneezed on each other. Was everybody on Earth already infected? What did it take to infect someone? She realized she needed to discuss this with Warren, and soon.
Li was healing. Amazingly, the bleeding had stopped almost as soon as they had gotten her to the trauma clinic. She had been feverish and thirsty, demanding water which she gulped greedily. Then she had slept. Gold had inspected her then, and the wound was still raw and suppurated, oozing plasma, the surrounding skin an angry red. But Li had been resting and not dead, which was, in Gold’s experience, very rare. Limited to her and Silver, she mused, and not something the governments of her day would have been able to pull off.
Li had recovered rapidly. Gold had too, but she had shrugged off medical attention, and Warren had nodded at her after only a cursory examination.
Footsteps behind her. She turned, and it was as she expected, Warren. She still looked tired, but seemed to have rested. She’d pressed her uniform shirt, sleeves rolled up precisely. Gold nodded to her.
“Nice night,” Warren said, breaking the ice first. “You get any sleep?”
“A little,” Gold said. “When you get older, you sleep less, I think.”
“How old are you?” Warren asked. Gold sighed inwardly. These conversations never ended well.
“How old do I look?” Gold asked, taking her standard approach.
Warren studied her. “You look to me about thirty, maybe a shade less. A very fit and healthy thirty.” She smiled at Gold, suddenly. “You remind me of somebody I knew, back in the old world.”
“Friend of yours?” Gold asked. She knew Warren liked women; it was obvious from the first moment she met her. She had quite openly checked Gold out, her gaze lingering over her body just a shade too long, undressing her. Gold did not mind. Warren seemed nice, and in another time and place, maybe there could be something. She was strong, fit, and used to command. Women like that were interesting sometimes.
But not now. Gold needed to stay focused, and there was Li to think of. Silver too. This whole situation was getting too complicated, she thought. Keep it simple.
Warren nodded. “In San Diego, just before the war.” Warren sighed. “Her name was Maria, Mexican girl. Quite a temper, she had. We had some good times, back then. San Diego was nice. Man it was nice! Good weather, good food, nice beaches. Taco trucks, remember taco trucks?”
Gold smiled. “Haven’t had a good taco in a while,” she agreed. “I liked San Diego. I spent a little time there, but not much.” She breathed the night air, sniffing after a hint of a familiar scent, but then it was gone.
“When was this?” Warren asked, probing. “I mean, let’s cut the shit, shall we? I know you’re old, old as me and the rest of us. So let’s have that talk.”
Gold eyed her. She nodded. “OK, let’s cut the bullshit,” she said. “I am old. Old enough to remember San Diego when it was a big Navy base, sure. Ask your questions.”
Warren nodded. “Maria worked in personnel. Good to have friends in human resources, never hurts. Anyway, Navy’s like a big gossip mill, you know? People say shit they really shouldn’t say, loose lips sinking ships and all that.” She smiled at Gold. “You know how it is.”
Gold nodded again, not sure where Warren was going with this, but willing to listen.
Warren went on. “She told me this story, which I just remembered today as I was falling asleep for my little power nap, you know?”
Gold smiled. “This going somewhere, Warren?”
Warren laughed, leaning up against the parapet. “I’ll get the
re, just let me tell it. She used to snoop through files, just out of curiosity, I think. Not supposed to do that, but Maria didn’t care. She was nosy. And she talked. To me, at least. Too much, I guess. Anyway, this operator, special-ops type, was applying for transfer from this black unit, working with the CIA’s OE. You know, the operations people. Shooters. Bang bang, sneak away, that sort of thing.”
Warren looked at Gold, trying to catch her eye in the dim moonlight. Gold spread her hands. “OK, so what happened to this soldier?”
Warren nodded to herself. “Well, he had a record, it seems. Something he’d been mixed up in, super hush-hush, you know. Way things were back then, just before the war. Lots of paranoia, lots of secret shit going down. People still talked, though. So Maria asked around and got some interesting dirt. This operation, it had gone pear-shaped, all fucked up. Something up in the mountains, in Northern California. Something to do with a missing officer who got a whole spec-ops team shot to shit tangling with the Chinese.”
Gold said nothing. She just looked at Warren for a long moment. “And? Does this joke have a punchline?”
“Well,” Warren said. “I was interested. As a Captain, I had pull. Not much, but some. And I was working on the fringes of this area myself, being attached to Navy Recon operations. So I had clearance. I pulled his file. Took a close look. Some interesting stuff in there. I could see, reading between the lines, that they had covered it up. So I did some digging.”
“Covered what up?” Gold said, although she knew the answer. Of course there would be records. Governments loved their records. Monkeys chattered in the treetops.
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