But I must shelve these considerations as Jaelle steps into Hartain’s office. The heavy-set Morok is pacing, muttering under his breath in his guttural native tongue.
“I am familiar enough with Morok deities to know that the one you are invoking is fond of bringing plagues of misfortune on others.”
“And would that Defaraness will hear my plea and strike Elsanak with the Ribisan equivalent of boils!” Hartain explodes, waving his long arms about.
Jaelle slips casually into a chair uninvited but confident. “What ails?”
“I have told you that our relations with the Ribisan Guild are strained and difficult. Properly they are not Guild at all as they answer to their own kind and not to the Guild itself. They are simply whatever Ribisan criminal element we can reach.”
“I thought as much from things that I learned from Madame Ferlan,” Jaelle says.
“I have been trying for years to find out what is going on with oxygen-breather life at some base or city below us. Always I am rebuffed by the Ribisans. I suspected it was some operation of theirs, possibly with Mysol, that contained profit they did not need to share with me as they had the backing of the legitimate government here on Tir-a-Mar.
“But now I find, by sheer happenstance of an intercepted communication with Elsanak, that the Ribisan Guild brought a human up to Tir-a-Mar in a covert op from whatever installation this is—”
“What?” Jaelle’s acting skills are impressive. We had briefed her in detail about Shon, but her expression of astonishment was persuasive. “What does this mean? Who was it?”
Hartain flops down into a chair. “I know little but will learn more. It is the human female, you told me of, Diralia Shon. She arrived on Tir-a-Mar from somewhere. She has contacts with a Ribisan, who had contact with their Guild. They were offered 100,000 credits, Defaraness molest their mothers! 100,000 credits to transport Shon to Tir-a-Mar and return her twenty-four hours later, unobserved and undetected to wherever it is she comes from. That caught my attention.
“Why she is here, I do not know. A name was mentioned, Eldfaran, but that name means nothing to us. It does seem like one of the names of convenience that the Ribisans use with us, as neither side’s names mean anything to each other.”
“Interesting,” Jaelle observes, her tail swishing. “The fact that she needs to be undetected, both here and where she came from, implies that she is evading whatever authorities are on this other outpost, for reasons they would not accept.”
“Clearly, and they are hiding it not only from the authorities here and there, but from us,” Hartain growled. “They intend to keep this operation purely Ribisan.”
“Are you sure that the element you are in touch with on the Ribisan side is a criminal element? Could they be political?”
Hartain shrugged his massive shoulders. “Who knows? Is there even a difference with them? You and I are as different from each other as the poles of a planet. Yet compared to a Ribisan we are nearly identical, we breathe oxygen, pump blood, and are made of carbon. Like all life we have found, we walk upright on two legs.”
“Save the Conchirri,” Jaelle said absently.
“They were made. Somebody’s biological ordnance that got loose to feast on the galaxy.
“The Ribisans are so unlike us it is hard to even regard them as life. Crime is based on vice and greed. Can you imagine what is considered vice or perversion for a creature made of silicon, at home in methane and chlorine at pressures that would turn you into paste?”
“No, I am glad to say I cannot,” Jaelle returned with a slight shudder.
“So, to answer your question – I do not know, nor really care who the parties are that call themselves Guild among the silicates. They came to us a decade ago and we have had reasonable profit from them, but our operations only barely overlap. One of those overlaps fortunately gave me this communication by mistake.”
“What will you do?” Jaelle asked.
“There is money in this. Someone fronted 100,000 credits for this small operation. Think of the wealth that implies with money so casually spent. Shon came to either meet someone named Eldfaran or to work on some project of that name. Then she is to return to whence she came. We must find out more so we can insert ourselves in this operation. Yet now, when I need my people most, Croyzer’s forces have made a sweep, locking up most of them. Kesphan talked too much, even throwing suspicion on us for the attempt to kill Fels.”
“Croyzer suspects you?”
“Even if she didn’t, she’s too thorough to not strike us.”
I judge the time right. “Jaelle, advise Hartain of what we discussed.”
“I have a thought,” Jaelle said. “Why would it be so urgent for someone to spend a fortune just to reach Tir-a-Mar? In short what has recently changed?”
Hartain clapped his large black-nailed hands together. “Fels, his warship.”
“Visible to anyone with sensor equipment.”
“She is trying to find the officer?”
Jaelle rose. “I’ll find out. Fels will be moving if he met Shon and I think it likely this happened. I’ve been keeping tabs on him. He seems to have gone to ground, not seen at the hotel for some hours when I called. I think it is time to ready my ship. If Fels is going to escape, he’ll need me and my shuttle. Please do keep in mind how valuable I am becoming to you, Guildmaster, with so many of your people out of action.”
“I place you above my favorite daughter at this point. Find out. Report back.”
I wake Wrik in the early morning hours. “Jaelle has left to get Dusko and the shuttle,” I report to Wrik. “It’s time for us to make our move as well.”
Wrik nods, takes a deep breath and stands. Shon, who must already have been awake, comes into the room. She looks frightened. There is clear reason for her fear as I consider what could await us. Moved by a sudden impulse, I place my hand on Wrik’s arm. He looks at me in surprise.
“Consider,” I begin in a low voice, “that it might be as well for you to remain here in relative safety—”
“No,” he says with a decisive shake of the head. “You said it yourself. I may just be a fragile collection of blood and bone, but I’ve made the difference between failure and success, or even survival, on our missions.”
“Yes,” I continue in earnest, “but I fear that some random act of violence, or a mere change in temperature or atmosphere, irrelevant to me, could take you away forever.”
He smiles his lop-sided smile. “I can’t be kept so safe that the only point to my existence is to prolong it. Then I’m not even Wrik anymore. I’m nothing.”
I drop my hand. “I wish you would reconsider.”
He leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “You worry too much.”
“This from you?” I respond. “You, who worries about everything?”
“You’re rubbing off on me.”
“I do not abrade so easily.”
We become aware that Shon is staring at us, shaking her head in evident wonder.
Wrik looks a question at her.
“You really don’t see it do you?” she says. “I suppose you’re too close to it.”
“See what?” he asks.
“Billions of years ago something happened that we still don’t understand. Matter somehow came to life. One second the universe was dead and the next, things began to grow, to breath, eventually to wonder. We know it’s happened multiple times throughout space but it was always eons ago. Until now.
“She’s an AI with empathy, with a sense of herself and of others. I don’t know how old Maauro is, or who made her, but sometime since her creation, so close that we can touch the original lifeform itself, life took root in her. You, Maauro, are alive in ways no other mechanism or AI begins to approach. You’re artificial in origin, but by any definition I can think of, alive, aware, even moral. You went from m
ere matter to life and not billions of years ago, but recently. It’s incredible.”
We stand considering, looking at each other.
“I have operated for 50,131 years,” I say finally, moved by her words to share the truth. “No species you know of made me. For most of that time I was stranded on an asteroid, only marginally aware of my own existence. I do not know if others like me were also…alive. I was the latest model and there were few of us made, perhaps I am unique, but did not recognize it until I met Wrik and began this existence with him. I have no recollection of any transition, any epiphany. There is no moment that I can look back on and say, “I now think and therefore I am.
“Wrik has referred to the divine spark, but I can detect no such thing in any system I have. Yet I believe I am alive. I have fought a bitter and costly battle to obtain the freedom to follow my own path among the stars, released from my initial combat programming. I would have lost that battle but for Wrik.
“I thank you for recognizing me as a living being. I sometimes have trouble believing it myself.”
Wrik shrugs. “I never saw you any other way. Well after you stopped scaring me to death with your space-zombie look.”
I cross my arms and glare. “I had not been maintained in fifty millennia and I was originally made for combat, not esthetics.”
“This isn’t your original appearance?” Shon asked.
“No, when factory delivered I was 40% larger, but I suffered severe battle damage. My humanoid appearance was rather rudimentary—”
“Space-zombie,” Wrik interjects with a grin.
Taking a cue from Jaelle’s behaviors toward Wrik when he is verbally playful, I whack him on the arm with my palm. These mock attacks, I have learned, are a way of saying; I am specially networked with this person and free to take these liberties. I am extremely careful with the force I employ. “One more space-zombie crack and you will be riding outside of the capsule.”
The two humans laugh, a quick burst of sound that sheds some of their tension.
“Time to go,” I say.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We slipped out of Maauro’s little apartment for the last time, one way or the other. I found myself feeling a twinge of regret for doing so. It seemed I was forever leaving comfortable, safe places to plunge into the opposite. There must be something wrong with me.
We jumped in a cab, which took us to one of the elevators that descended to the lowest levels where the drop ship would be. The long descent was spent in silence, each of us alone in our thoughts. I thought of Jaelle, her warm body lying by mine, her plans for our future. I was lost in contemplating that future when we arrived at the industrial park where cargo was shipped in and out. While there were no other floating cities, officially, on Cimer there were air mines and other installations scattered about. This largely automated facility serviced those.
We walked in through sliding doors; a clerk at the front desk nodded at us. He was one of Eldfaran’s contacts who’d set up the drop. He didn’t seem too happy in his job today, and was sweating despite the constant temperature. We walked on to the floor that held the various bays for cargo containers and dropships. I was pleased to see ours was in a quiet spot in the back of the huge hanger in a bay of its own.
I was less pleased to see Olivia Croyzer sitting atop the dropship as if it was a throne. Her posture was elaborately casual and she rested her hand on her long hilted baton as a warrior-queen might have rested it on a sword.
“Maauro,” I whispered.
“She obviously sees us,” Maauro said flatly, a sure sign she was upset. “If there is an ambush here, then she set it without using any communications, tacnet or other electronic support and their weapons are not registering power.”
“Come on,” I said.
Maauro looked at me. “Wrik, she is likely waiting there to arrest us.”
“I don’t think so. Making a point of pride instead. I’ll handle her.”
“You’ll be the first one to try and not draw back a bloody stump,” Shon said.
“Wrik sometimes overestimates his influence on females,” Maauro added.
I smiled at her. “We have no other way to the lab and we are running out of time and resources. Besides, if we can’t convince Croyzer, we’re done here anyway.”
“Very well,” she said, “but if I yell, “Down!” you do not hesitate, you do not argue and you above all do not attempt to help me. You drop to the deck and remain still.”
“OK.”
“Promise me. Your OKs have a vague feel and a poor history to them.”
“I promise. Down and still.”
I half-turned to Shon. “Stay behind us.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
We walked across the deck toward the dropship as if we had every right in the world to be there, passing robo-loaders, other automatics and the occasional deck crew.
“Croyzer’s men?” Maauro asked.
For some reason it made me absurdly happy that she was asking my advice in a tactical situation. “No, they keep looking at us with normal curiosity. Cops would be studiously ignoring us.”
“Sound analysis…accepted.”
“It implies,” I added, “that she doesn’t have a firefight in mind.”
“Or you are overestimating her concerns over collateral damage.”
I swallowed.
Croyzer watched us come, her one natural eye bright and fixed on us, the other hidden in her fall of hair, but doubtless probing us as well. We stopped below her, looking up, just as she intended, holding the literal and metaphoric high ground.
I gestured at the dropship. “Were you thinking of buying it?”
She smiled her chilly smile. “Why? Did you have plans for it?”
“You know that I do, although how you figured that out, I have no idea.”
“I have friends in low places,” she growled. “And yes, I do know you need the dropship, though I will grant I don’t know why. But before this ends, I will.”
She looked us over. “Jedaya Fels, who isn’t that person, or a simple scoutship officer. Dr. Diralia Shon, who was supposed to have left Tir-a-Mar over a year ago for parts unknown and yet stands in front of me. And last, but far from least, little Estrella Lostly. That was a cute touch, the name, Lost Star. Too cute, for future reference.”
“I will bear that in mind,” Maauro said, face and voice calm and neutral.
“You’re the super-hacker of course,” Croyzer continued. “Jedaya…or what the hell is your real name?”
I recognized a raise when I saw the chips hitting the tabletop, “Wrik is the only true name I can give you.”
“Wrik, no offense, you’re not as fucking brilliant as those cyber-attacks and infiltrations have been.”
“None taken,” I replied.
“Doctor Shon is brilliant, but not in the field of cybernetics, so it clearly wasn’t her. Truth be told, your work is still an order of magnitude more impressive than hers.”
“Thank you,” Maauro said.
“I eventually figured out you weren’t human. Too many minor details that were off, even for you to be a mutation, such as how my car sagged on the side you were sitting on despite the police suspension, the big eyes, the blink rate—”
“A group of teenagers I was spending time with once figured it out in fifteen minutes.”
“Maauro,” I whispered.
Croyzer’s lips thinned.
“I have modified details of my outer matrix to appear more human,” Maauro said with a conciliatory air, “a few minor imperfections in skin tone. I guess I still have to work on the blinking pattern.”
“So what is she?” Croyzer said to me, “an HCR? Are you controlling her?”
“Don’t be nasty. You know neither of those things is true or possible. Her name is Maauro
and she is an AI. It would be prudent of you to speak directly to her and nicely. She’s quite capable of taking offense.”
She turned back to Maauro and the smile now had a wolfish quality. “Is that so? Well, Maauro, just so you know where we stand. I have a complete tactical unit concealed in here. All plans were made verbally, so there’s nothing on any net you could access, using no equipment you could detect until it powers up. Weapons are cold unless I give a loud yell or something happens to me. I’m being watched by a system even you can’t spoof, a Mk1 human eyeball.”
“Yes, I know, your Sergeant. I can see him.” Maauro pointed.
That seemed to take Croyzer aback. She hadn’t counted on him being spotted.
“In the final solution, just in case I underestimated you,” Croyzer continued slowly, “I have explosive charges set on the hatch above. We’ll all get a nice methane bath at -200C, briefly.”
Maauro cocked her head at Croyzer. “You do not have enough men or weapons on Tir-a-Mar to destroy me. Not if they were all gathered here, ready to fight. None of your precautions are sufficient to deter or discommode me. I remain still because I wish to avoid unnecessary deaths if at all possible and out of concern for Wrik who is human and vulnerable. Consider that a double-edged sword. Wrik alive limits my tactical options. Wrik dead will cause the death of anyone even remotely connected with that act.”
“She likes you,” Croyzer said.
“She’s my best friend,” I said candidly.
Maauro turned to me. “Commerce time?”
I nodded. “What do you want, Olivia?”
She gave me a look of mingled fury and admiration at the use of her first name. “Who are you really? What is going on in my city? Who is the other person I was chasing? Why should I let you go on doing what you are, when I know you are linked to the delivery of weapons and drugs to my place in the universe, and that’s only the stuff I’ve found out about so far.
“But the big question is what has gotten Cimer so stirred up that there are rumors of open war breaking on the Ribisan side of the airlock. Who are you dealing with out there? I told you before that this was my place and I don’t like it being turned upside down.”
Against That Time Page 28
