Network Effect

by Martha Wells

  Amena’s jaw dropped. “We’d have to pay someone to rescue us?”

  Ratthi rubbed his face and muttered, “Oh, I hate the Corporation Rim.”

  “Really? Me too,” I said. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

  And I had just thought of something that I should have noticed earlier.

  Amena was clearly trying to work out all the possible repercussions. “And if corporates did show up, would you be okay? Because you’re a construct?”

  “I’m fine,” I told her. It is amazing what the people on Preservation don’t know about how the Corporation Rim operates. “SecUnits are legal here. Your mother is my registered owner and you’re her designated representative.” And it was definitely Amena and not Thiago.

  Amena looked appalled. “My mother doesn’t own you.”

  “Yes, she does.” Dr. Bharadwaj had told me how Preservation-based humans don’t understand these concepts and I had believed her, mostly, but seeing it in action was always different.

  Amena looked at Ratthi for help. He nodded grimly. “Arada, Overse, and I all have certified copies of the legal document stored in our interfaces, just in case. If we do fall into the hands of corporates, Amena, you must assert legal ownership of SecUnit.”

  Amena waved her hands. “But that’s—Ugh!”

  “I don’t like it, either,” I told her.

  Ratthi said, “That aside, Perihelion says it will be some time before it can make repairs to its engine systems so we’re able to start the search, and we have preparations and plans to make.” He clapped his hands briskly. “So will you come out of the bathroom now?”

  “Yes.” I pushed myself off the counter and pulled my jacket on over ART’s stupid T-shirt. “Because ART is lying.”

  This time when the lights fluctuated, it wasn’t sarcastic.

  * * *

  I walked out into Medical. The view of the control area was still active, with Arada seated in a station chair and Thiago now standing next to her. They were cycling through engine status data on ART’s alien-remnant-augmented wormhole trip, occasionally making little horrified noises.

  Overse was in Medical now, with the implant we had removed from Eletra on a sterile work surface. She was examining it using an imaging field. The magnified scans of the individual parts floated in it, rotating. Eletra was sitting up on a gurney near Overse, peering uncertainly at what she was doing with the implant.

  Overse pulled out of her feed to look over at us inquiringly. “Is, uh, everyone ready to talk now?”

  “Not exactly.” Ratthi sounded concerned, which was totally unfair.

  I said, “Arada, this transport did not come to this system in answer to a distress call.”

  Thiago turned around to watch me suspiciously. Arada pushed back her station chair. Someone had brought her some supplies from the emergency kit, because the burn on her cheek had been treated. “SecUnit, I think we have a working arrangement with Perihelion for now. Unless this is something that could endanger us, are you sure you want to … confront it just at the moment?”

  I said, “I am absolutely sure.”

  Ratthi threw his hands in the air and went over to sit next to Overse.

  With a “let’s get this over with” expression, Overse asked, “SecUnit, how do you know there wasn’t a distress call?”

  I said, “This is a teaching and research vessel. The student quarters and classroom compartments aren’t in use, and the lab module was inactive, and there was no cargo module attached. So what was it doing when it got this distress call?”

  All the humans looked up at the ceiling.

  ART said, And this is your idea of being helpful.

  I said, “This is my idea of the opposite of being helpful. I am here against my will and you are going to regret that.”

  Arada pressed both hands to her face. “Maybe you should go back in the bathroom and think about this a little more.”

  “I’m done thinking,” I said.

  ART said, That’s obvious.

  I know, I walked into that one, which oddly enough, did not make me any less mad. I said, “You came here for a reason, and it wasn’t a distress call. What was it?”

  On the side of the room to my right, this was going on:

  (Eletra whispered to Overse and Ratthi, “Why are you letting your SecUnit … do this?”

  Overse’s jaw tightened. She said, “It’s not our SecUnit, it’s—”

  Ratthi squeezed her wrist and gave her what I recognized as a “don’t trust the corporates” look. He told Eletra, “It’s normally very responsible.”)

  Thiago was eyeing me through the conference image, frowning. He said, “It is a good question.”

  (Of course, none of the sensible humans are supporting me now, it has to be the one who never agrees with me when I’m not being an idiot.) I said to ART, “Why were you here? What do you really do? Deep space research, teaching humans, cargo hauling, none of those are reasons to be here, in the system where corporates were trying to salvage a dead colony.”

  ART said, Everything that occurred before my crew was captured is irrelevant. It is none of your business.

  I said, “You made it my business when you kidnapped me.”

  You are not here against your will. Leave whenever you want. You know where the door is.

  That sounded just as sarcastic and mean as you think it did. Also possibly really threatening to the humans. Arada and Ratthi were both waving at me, making gestures which I interpreted as urgent requests for me to shut up now. But I had gotten ART to lose its temper again and be threatening, and that was what I wanted. I folded my arms and said, “You’re upsetting Amena.”

  I’d noted that ART’s tone when it spoke to Amena was completely different than it was to the other humans. I didn’t think it would hurt the others, but it wasn’t careful of their feelings the way it was of Amena’s. Whatever else ART was, the classroom space and bunkrooms said it was actually, on a regular basis, a teaching vessel. And before this when I was stupid and we were still friends it had talked about human adolescents in an indulgent way.

  Amena took a breath, probably to object, based on her whole “despite being a relatively sheltered adolescent from the most naive human society in existence, I feel a need to pretend that none of this is bothering me” thing. I looked at her and tapped our private feed connection. Be honest.

  She let the breath out. She prodded the deck with the toe of her shoe and admitted, reluctantly, “The gray people were terrifying. And being shot at, and … I’d really like to know what’s going on, not just a convenient story.”

  There was a long silence. I felt a lot of human eyes looking at me, and the sense of weight and attention through the feed that was ART. Finally ART said, I have to violate my crew’s confidentiality agreement in order to answer that question.

  I said, “You kidnapped me and my humans. That violated my contract. A contract I made with them, myself.” Not a company contract, I meant. A me contract. And ART had got me dragged into this and messed everything up.

  ART said, I will consider it. Then it put up a connection schematic, which showed it had just cut Eletra’s active connection out of the general feed. On a closed channel with me and my five humans, ART said, This information must be kept private. If any of you reveal anything I tell you to the corporate representative, I will kill her.

  I had a release of adrenaline from my organic parts. Uncomfortable, and weird. I wasn’t attached to Eletra, who seemed like the typical human client I had had with the company. (Not too dumb, not too smart, and only 53 percent likely to do something that ended up with me (1) shot (2) abandoned on a hostile planet.) But she was adjacent to my humans and I didn’t like the idea of anybody dying anywhere in that neighborhood.

  The humans clearly had a moment of tension. There were a lot of gazes all intersecting each other and attempts to conceal worried expressions. Then Arada said, Agreed. We won’t tell her anything. She cleared her throat and said aloud, “Maybe w
e can use your cabins, to clean up and rest?”

  ART said, on the general feed, Of course.

  * * *

  Ratthi and Overse helped Eletra get settled into one of ART’s bunkrooms (an unused one that the asshole gray people didn’t manage to get their growth medium odor all over). There was an attached bathroom and Ratthi brought self-heating meal boxes and beverage containers for her so she didn’t have an excuse to wander around. I put a drone sentry outside the door because I don’t trust anybody with security, particularly ART.

  My humans went to the galley, which was far enough from the bunkroom that Eletra wouldn’t hear the conversation, even if she walked out into the corridor. The humans were eating meals, too, and Thiago had made a hot liquid for them in the galley’s prep unit.

  ART put up another unnecessarily elaborate split display, with a view on Eletra, who had finished eating, taken the medication ART’s MedSystem had recommended, and curled up to sleep.

  Arada, still eating her meal, said, “Perihelion, are you ready to answer SecUnit’s questions now?”

  (Actually first she said, “SecUnit, will you stop pacing and sit down?”

  I said, “No.”)

  ART said, I am a teaching vessel, and a research vessel for deep space mapping, and I sometimes haul cargo. All that is true. My crew also gathers information and takes actions for anti-corporate organizations that operate as part of and are supported by the polity of Mihira and New Tideland, and administered by the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. These actions are often dangerous.

  Arada nodded, exchanging a look with Overse. Arada said, “So you came here because of this lost colony. To examine it before the corporates arrived?”

  We received information that a database reconstruction contracted by a consortium of corporations involved in salvage and reclamation had turned up coordinates to a colony seeded approximately thirty-seven corporate standard years ago.

  “An abandoned colony.” Amena stirred the goop on her plate, glaring. “A bunch of people left to die, like our great-grandparents.”

  Amena wasn’t wrong, it was similar to what had happened to the colonists who had eventually founded Preservation. They had been “seeded” (that actually means “dumped”) on a mostly terraformed planet with the idea that supply ships would return through the wormhole at frequent intervals until the colony was self-supporting. This was exactly how corporates established colonies now. Except sometimes the corporates went bankrupt or were attacked by other corporates and the wormhole data was destroyed or the wormhole itself destabilized or all record of the colony’s existence was just lost in a database that ended up locked due to legal battles over ownership. And so no supply ships came and all the humans starved or died when the cheap shitty terraforming failed. I’d seen movies and shows that used this as a plot, but I hadn’t known they weren’t just stories until I came to Preservation. (Most had depressing endings and were part of a whole “awful things happening to isolated groups of helpless humans” genre that was not my favorite.)

  ART said, The colonies are abandoned and cut off due to corporate bankruptcy or negligence, yes. Dead, not necessarily. Some manage to survive.

  Arada had finished eating and was folding up her plate for the recycler. “Didn’t you say this site had two colonies?”

  Yes. Historical sources recorded the existence of a former Pre–Corporation Rim colony on this site, but no other information.

  ART put the colony report, what there was of it, in the feed. It looked like it was put together from fragments, as if someone had deleted the original and this was a reconstruction. Most of it was what ART had already told us: original Pre–Corporation Rim colony site, which nobody knew crap about or if they had none of the data had survived to make it into this report. Corporate colony seeded by a company called Adamantine Explorations, partial terraforming. No info on number of colonists, terrain, weather, habitats, equipment, illegal genetic experimentation, very illegal alien remnants, nothing.

  The only interesting new info was from one of ART’s crew members, an augmented human named Iris, who had added some newsfeed archives about the hostile takeover of Adamantine Explorations after the colony had been established. There were three different articles from news sources that said an undetermined number—anywhere from four to twenty-four—Adamantine Explorations employees had died in a firefight, holding off the corporate takeover long enough for their database of wormhole coordinates to be deleted. The only reason the physical data storage still existed was that the attackers had broken in and killed the techs before they could vaporize it. Iris’s note ended: Tempting to think that they were trying to deliberately protect? conceal? the colony. Possible? Just not likely.

  I didn’t think it was likely, either. But like Iris, I thought the fact that three different news sources had reported versions of the story indicated that the incident or a variation of it had actually occurred.

  All the humans were quiet as they read the report. (Yes, it feels like it takes them forever. I sorted through my media storage but I knew they would finish before I could get anything started.)

  “That’s strange,” Overse said softly. “Were they trying to protect the colony? Or just their investment?”

  “You just like a mystery,” Arada told her, most of her attention on the report.

  “I like mysteries in fiction, not in our lives,” Overse retorted.

  ART ignored them. My crew’s mission was to ascertain whether the colony was still inhabited, and if so, attempt contact, and prevent interference and exploitation by salvage corporations, whether by evacuating the inhabitants or, if the colony is actually viable, providing assistance.

  Amena leaned her elbows on the table. “But why do you have to do that? If people from the colony survived, then there’s nothing another corporation could do, right? If the original corporation that sent the colony is gone, then the people are free.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works here,” Overse told her. Her expression had that grimly frustrated quality that was common when my humans talked about the corporates. “Another corporation could move in and take over.”

  Amena was skeptical. “Take over? But people are living there. I guess they could settle a second colony somewhere on the planet but they couldn’t take over the existing colony. Could they?”

  “They could,” Overse assured her. “They have.”

  Amena’s expression turned horrified. “But that’s like—I don’t know what it is, but it’s at least kidnapping.”

  “That’s how it works in the Corporation Rim,” Thiago told her, stirring his liquid. “The planet is considered property, someone’s property that can be salvaged if the original owner is gone. The colonists, or their descendants or whoever is living there now, don’t have any claim.”

  “Perihelion, what do you do about it? How do you help the colonists?” Ratthi asked.

  ART said, The University has the means to produce the colony’s original charter documents, which often contain clauses specifying that if the originating corporate body has ceased operations, then ownership of the planet is ceded to the colonists or their issue or successors living on the original site.

  I’d heard the key words “means to produce” as opposed to “archival copies.” I said, “You and your crew collect the necessary survey data from the colony and the University forges the documents.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, I was mad at ART, but the overall mission sounded great in a “screw a corporation sideways” way.

  “Is that right, Perihelion?” Ratthi asked.

  ART ignored us. A contract between the colony and an independently operated transfer station is then facilitated. Once the station has established a presence, then the colony is relatively secure from the worst excess of corporate predation, and free to accept other forms of assistance offered by non-corporate entities.

  Arada’s mouth was twisted. “Eletra said there were two corporate ships
here, correct? Did you arrive in this system before or after they did?”

  Before. With my crew held hostage, I was forced to comply with their captors’ orders to fire on a Barish-Estranza support carrier. But my memory archive of that period is damaged and I don’t know what happened to the vessel or the crew.

  “So the gray people could also have these corporate crews as prisoners.” Ratthi looked like he was trying to figure out just how many humans we might have to rescue. “Do you know why they brought Eletra and the other corporate onboard … you?” He made a vague gesture over his shoulder. “Why they put the implants in them?”

  “I thought it was to torture them for fun,” Amena said darkly.

  ART hesitated, though not long enough for the humans to notice. They may have wanted their shuttle. It’s still docked in my secondary cargo module slot. That hesitation would have been suspicious, but I also thought ART might honestly not know. Which was strange, because it should know. Maybe the memory archive issue was worse than ART had implied. But my two landing shuttles are also still in place, so that’s unlikely.

  Arada propped her chin on her hand. She was exhibiting several behaviors indicating that she was deep in thought. “Perihelion, did the rest happen as you explained, that when you came back online your crew was gone?”

  Yes.

  There was a tone to that word. Not ART’s base level of sarcasm. It had an edge that echoed in the feed.

  I didn’t react. ART had kidnapped me to get me here, put my humans in danger. I was not going to feel sympathy for it. Absolutely not.

  Ratthi’s expression was dubious. “Any luck remembering what happened when they disappeared?”