by Watts Martin
“A life of being a drifter with no fixed address but her spaceship.”
“We all have our own normal. Look, Agent Thomas—can I call you Jack?—Jack, you’ve solved the case. You found the databox on Corbett and you can charge him with the theft and extradite his ass to Earth. If I take the box back to Keces, everybody wins.”
The brows go up higher than she thought they could. “You’re not seriously suggesting I should simply hand the box over to you.”
“Well.” She takes a deep breath. “I wouldn’t want to break your chain of custody, so maybe you come back to Molinar with me this afternoon and deliver it to them yourself. You know it ends up back with the right owners.” Also, she gets a whole lot of money.
“It hasn’t been definitively proven that this is even the right databox—”
“How many do you think there are?”
“—and as much as I appreciate you telling me how I should do my job while I’m in your part of space, I need to go over a lot of questions with the PFS officers about not just your role in this but Keces’s role. This case started well before yesterday.”
Of course. Blue Notice. “So what else can I clear up for you?”
He taps his jacket over the databox. “Why not just put this in someone’s pocket on a normal flight? It would have been thousands of times less expensive.”
“They’re really paranoid.”
“Yes, they are. They don’t trust you. They don’t trust your judicial system. I don’t know what that suggests to you, but it makes me question whether the databox—or the data on it—was theirs to begin with.”
Didn’t she already have a headache? Apparently not, because that, that sudden stabbing pain right now, that is a headache. She rubs her temples. “You’re saying they might be trying to get me to recover something they already stole.”
“It’s possible.”
She waves her hands in front of her, fingers curled like claws, her voice rising. “It still wouldn’t be my problem, Jack!” She points at the door. “I was hired to bring this box back to them. Period. Yes, it’s possible they stole it first. It’s possible that it was never on the ship I found in the first place, or that it was but they were the ones who stole it off the ship from somebody else and they were double-crossed by their own man. All sorts of things are possible and all of them would make fantastic crime shows, but they’re all shows I’d like to not be starring in!”
As she finishes she’s just about screaming. Agent Squarejaw is staring at her as if she’s lost her mind. It’s possible.
After a couple seconds pass, he speaks more softly. “Ms. Simmons, if your part in this doesn’t extend any farther than what you’ve claimed, I’ll get you back on your way as fast as I’m able to. But the databox can only be released to its actual owners. Those owners may be Keces. But one thing that’s certain, however, is that they’re not you.”
He walks to the door. “I need to talk to the officers in charge. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Gail slumps down in the uncomfortable seat, staring at the wall.
The moment is closer to three minutes, but she’d been expecting much worse. Squarejaw returns with the uniformed leopard guy. “You’re free to go,” the leopard says.
She leaps to her feet so fast she nearly misses the rest.
“—to have to stay on Panorica while we complete the investigation.”
“What? How long will that take?”
“I doubt it’ll take more than a day or two.”
“I have a deadline of tomorrow to bring the databox back!”
“Keces will have to understand that the situation’s changed,” Squarejaw says, tone maddeningly reasonable.
“Let’s go to your ship so you can get what you’ll need off it before we lock it down,” the leopard continues.
“Before—” Gail stares. “You’re impounding Kismet?”
“We have to temporarily disable the pilot controls and AI.”
The leopard’s the one who spoke, but she looks back at Thomas, stricken. “You can’t do that!”
“That’s what I’m told you do here in this situation.” He sounds genuinely puzzled at her reaction, like he’s doing her a massive favor by turning her ship off instead of throwing her into prison. Like they’re not pretty much the same thing.
“That’s what they do here to criminals. I live on my ship.”
The leopard sounds apologetic now, a little uncomfortable. “Restricting movement of suspects under active investigation is standard operating procedure, and we have to do this with someone who owns her own ship. Ms. Simmons, we really will try to make it as fast as we can, I promise.”
“She’s—she’s my home. My job. My assistant for everything. I’m talking with her all the time.”
“We have to restrict your ship’s movement, too, not just yours.”
“You can afford a hotel room, can’t you?” Squarejaw remains polite but unsympathetic. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing to her. Or he’s just an asshole. Yes, she can afford a hotel room, although it’ll mean she’ll run completely out of money in one and a half months instead of two.
“Come on, Ms. Simmons.” The leopard motions her to follow him out of the room. She does, ears down.
“That’s everything?” the leopard says.
It’s not like this knapsack is a small bag. It’s just not huge. But it’s supposed to be only a few days. She checks—for the third time—that she has her old viewcard in there; she’s been using Kis as her interface for so long she hopes she can remember how it works. “Yeah, that’s everything.” She looks around Kismet’s cabin again, trying to keep the despair off her face. “Kis, I have to let them turn you off for a while.”
“Yes, Gail,” the ship responds, oblivious to what that means. But what does it mean? It’s not as if the ship’s going to resent her over this, resent the cops for making her do it. She can’t resent anything. Objectively, Gail knows that. Even calling the ship an AI drives people who actually know about this stuff—people like Ansel—nuts. She’s an expert system. Kis can carry on all sorts of conversations, can recall things Gail’s told her, can make complex associations and inferences. Within her design parameters, she’s smarter than any human who’s ever lived. But she won’t crack a joke. She won’t use metaphors. She’ll never start a conversation about anything that isn’t ship-related, never show volition. She can’t.
None of that makes this less painful.
Gail swallows, resting a hand on the aft bulkhead for a few seconds. “I’ll see you soon.”
She’d argued with the leopard—irony of ironies, his name is Jon Wolfe—on the way over about how this wasn’t necessary, how they could just lock the ship down physically or let her disable just the piloting and auto-piloting controls. He’d just kept repeating it was standard procedure to shut the AI down when a ship’s under guard, until she’d finally snapped at him. She’d been under suspicion once before, and they didn’t do anything this draconian.
“I bet that was before Carilco,” he’d responded simply, and she didn’t have a comeback. A ship’s expert system is the autopilot, and soft switches can be overridden. Ships don’t have self-destruct switches like they do in action shows, but it’s not hard to give one an order that accomplishes the same thing. It might warn you, but it won’t stop you. It won’t stop you from, for instance, ordering it to throw its engines wide open while it’s still docked. The death toll was close to a hundred, and if Carilco’s emergency response systems hadn’t worked perfectly it would have been in the thousands. It would have been another Alexandria. Or worse.
The hard switches in the system—the switches she leads Wolfe to now—are all or nothing. He crouches and looks at the panel, studying it a few seconds, then unlocks two of the knobs, pushing them in until they pop back out higher than normal and clicking them to OFF.
Nothing visible changes on the ship, but when Kismet goes offline Gail feels the disconnect. It’s as hard and physical
as the switch. It’s like having the world suddenly trip from color to black and white.
Wolfe straightens up, then looks down at her with a concerned expression, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
She nods stiffly, wondering what in her expression betrays the lie.
“I’ll try to make this go as fast as it can, and when we get any news I’ll let you know.” He leads her away from the ship, back through the port.
Focus on the business at hand. Don’t sniffle. “Is it more your investigation than Agent Thomas’s?”
“No, but officially it’s my responsibility.” His tail flicks behind him in irritation. “Thomas is the new liaison with Interpol, and the databox involves both inner and outer system. So he makes the calls. We can override him, though, and not the other way ’round.”
“He seems like he has a rod up his ass.” She raises her hands. “I mean that in the most complimentary way possible, officer.”
The leopard grins. “He cares about his job. A lot.” His tone carries an edge of cynical wonder. “First one I’ve seen like that from Interpol in eleven years.”
They’ve reached the exit to the port. It’s well past sunset; the streetlights wrapping around the inside of Panorica remind her of the Ring’s hills. For one peculiar moment she’s homesick for them. “Call me if you have any questions or problems, or just want a status update. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch shortly.”
Gail nods, but can’t think of anything else to say. Her throat’s closing up.
After a moment of hesitation, he waves awkwardly and heads back into the port building toward his office.
She steps outside, then turns around, staring dully backward as if she could see through walls and crowds, right to the dock she’d just come from. Yeah, that’s everything.
Chapter 7
The privacy door glides shut as Gail sits down in the booth, clear glass frosting over. She’s tired enough that the hard plastic chair bolted to the wall almost feels comfortable, despite having no allowance for tails. She didn’t think she could sleep, went back to another Magnolia Café—a quieter one—and stayed up all night alternating between crying into glasses of cheap wine and watching videos.
And now she’s here.
When’s the last time she’s had to use one of these? Six years ago? Seven? When she wanted—or needed—something with a genuine external display instead of her HUD, she always had Kismet. She pulls out her viewcard, holding her finger to it for a second until it powers on and recognizes her, then sets it into the booth’s holder. The projector snaps to life, a transparent blue curtain of light with a company logo filling the wall. After taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she makes the call.
The display shifts opaque, connection info scrolling in along the bottom. After several seconds it crossfades to a woman’s face, from shoulders up. A wolf woman, full transform, grey fur so dark it stops only a couple shades short of true black. Gail used to joke the white speckled highlights on her muzzle looked like stars. Her mane-like hair’s cut shorter on the sides than it used to be, but remains longer in the back. Despite little visible background in the picture she looks physically imposing. She is. She’d be at least as tall as Agent Squarejaw if she were standing by him. Even so, her expression’s warm and pleasant. “This is—”
She stops in mid-sentence, green eyes focusing on Gail and widening in clear shock.
Gail tries unsuccessfully not to hunch forward, but she manages a very small smile. “Hello, Sky.”
The wolf remains silent, still, for several seconds. “Hello, Gail.”
She swallows. “I’m sorry about not calling. I know we fought last time, but that’s not really a good excuse.”
“It’s not anything new, either. You look like you’ve been through a war. What’s happened?”
Never one for small talk. She wonders if it’s just so plain on her face, or if Sky would tell her the same thing Ansel did, about how she only comes by when she needs help. With Sky that’s less often true, but it’s a few orders of magnitude more humiliating when it is.
“I just haven’t slept much since yesterday. Um. Kismet’s been locked down by the PFS and I think Keces Industries is going to report me as socius indignus. I think…” Her voice cracks. “I think I’m in a lot of trouble.”
The wolf stares silently for three full seconds, then closes her eyes. “Mara’s Wounds. Start at the beginning.”
She does, starting with the tip and the wreck, the meeting with Nakimura, the confrontation at Port Panorica and the interrogation afterward. She doesn’t tell Sky about Adrian—that’s none of her business—and doesn’t tell her about Ansel blowing her off, because she’s still annoyed by it and because it’d remind her that Ansel wanted her to call Sky then. Not that the wolf could have done anything for her then. Not that Gail has any idea what she can do for her now.
“All right.” The wolf strokes along her muzzle, and her tone slips into the practiced patient-with-everything cadence that drives Gail nuts. “Even if Keces files a socius indignus order against you, your judiciary’s going to be able to freeze it immediately. The circumstances that led to this Interpol agent taking custody of the databox were well beyond your control.”
She looks down, mumbling just above a whisper. “I don’t have a judiciary.”
Sky’s ears lower. “What?”
“Mine went up to twenty-one hundred a month and I was in a pretty tight spot financially last year, and I get basic services as long as I’m paying Panorica’s citizenship fee.” So she’s paying to fund the PFS, but not to have an advocate against it. “I figured I’d restart when things were, you know, better. They are better. Or were until yesterday. I just hadn’t gotten around to setting it up again.”
She braces for the growl and lecture, but what she gets is far worse. Sky just sags in resigned disappointment, beyond anger or even surprise at how much her little sister’s screwed things up again. “Oh, Gail.”
“I didn’t know any of this would happen!”
“You keep a judiciary on retainer because you never know when something’s going to happen. That’s the whole point.” Oh, there’s the growl. “Engaging one on demand is far more expensive. And isn’t that a good price for that on Panorica?”
God, she just doesn’t get it. It’s not a bad price, objectively, but that’s not the point. With docking fees running about thirteen thousand a month on average—and that’s avoiding the more expensive ports—you start making tough choices when your income barely crests thirty thousand a few months in a row. “I didn’t. Have. The money.”
“I know.” Sky’s tone drops to miserably, maddeningly sympathetic. “I wish you’d stayed somewhere where every little thing isn’t tied to your income.”
Which means New Coyoacán. It could mean somewhere else on the Ceres Ring, but they both know she means New Coyoacán, with the big sister she’s not related to by blood, the big sister she can’t possibly live near—let alone with—anymore. They’re adults, they have their own lives, and their paths couldn’t possibly have taken them farther apart. Their relationship may be more tenuous separated by a few thousand kilometers, but whether Sky sees it or not, it’s a lot more peaceful. “I just want to get Kismet released. I want to get the hell out of here.”
“How can I help?”
Gail tries not to scream. “I don’t know, Sky. You tell me. You’re the mediator. I need you to be mine, okay? I need you to—” And all at once she can’t keep talking, because she’s crying. Hard. She wraps her arms around her sides, looking at the scuffed gray floor.
“Oh, Gail.” This time when Sky says it she sounds like she wants to step through the connection into the booth and hug the rat tightly. If she were there, she would, despite all the fights, despite Gail not returning her calls until she took the hint, despite them growing from sisters to near strangers. Somehow that makes it hurt worse. “I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll make calls to the PFS. I’ll see if I can get in tou
ch with Agent—what was his name?”
“Thomas.” She sniffles. “Jack Thomas.”
“And I’ll see what I can find out about Randall Corbett.” Her lips pull back from her teeth slightly. A full totemic wolf’s jaws are only about three-quarters the strength of a real wolf’s, but Sky could still bite your arm off. It’d just take her a few seconds longer. As far as Gail knows she never would, but she’d be fine with people occasionally worrying about the possibility. “He’s still being held?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see why they’d release him.” Gail throws herself back in the seat—she bangs her head against the booth’s wall, but doesn’t care. “God. Why would he do this do me?”
“You know a lot of people believe the bombing conspiracy theories.”
“Only people who already hate totemics.” But she’s right. Those people think the bomb was her mother’s, and it went off prematurely. Like most totemics, Gail’s sure it was Purity’s bomb, catching innocent bystanders along with the hated mongrels. According to others, it was the PFS, or one of a half-dozen Earth governments, or a secret society. “Jesus, his mother worked side-by-side with mom. He knew our family. He knows that’s bullshit.”
“People change. We both know how hard losing your mother that way, at that age, is. Randall left very shortly after that, didn’t he? His father moved away from Ceres entirely.” Disapproval rings in the wolf’s tone, as if leaving the Ring is, in and of itself, sufficient evidence to condemn Corbett of multiple crimes.
Gail can’t keep an edge of challenge out of her tone. “I moved away from Ceres entirely, too. Somehow I haven’t found myself joining any hate groups.”
“No, but you’ve found yourself in their crosshairs at least once before.” She sighs. “And you’ve spent a decade on the edge of constant poverty.”
“I’ve made good money some years. Can we not do this again for once? It’s my choice, just like your life is yours.”
Sky shakes her head, looking away from the camera. “You’ve made a life of not making choices.”
