Sundowner

by Claremont, Chris

  “What, you mean like calling one of us an ape?”

  “It goes way beyond that, there are cultural resonances you wouldn’t believe. I’m not sure I can explain.”

  “But you understand.”

  “Hardly. I may have exchanged binoculars for spectacles, but the optics are lousy. I see more, and not as well.”

  “They lied to you, Nicole. To us all.”

  “Looks like.”

  “How can you be so damn calm?”

  “Calm?” The word emerged drained of all emotion because otherwise, Nicole would have shrieked it. “So tell me, Hana, what did you find?”

  “Actually, it was a lot like looking for the C3 software sleeper. Nothing quite as obvious as an extra set of chromosomes. The changes, in and of themselves, are inconsequential.”

  “But the cascading, cumulative effect... ”

  “Right. Devastating. I don’t have access to Ciari’s medical history, but I’ll lay odds there’s a similar pattern throughout his DNA. I haven’t had the courage to take a look at mine.

  “They tried to fix things, Nicole, to erase the genetic configuration they’d superimposed on your own. In your case, though, I think the structure was interlaced too tightly. It wouldn’t all go away.”

  Nicole managed the faintest of chuckles. “Well, Ciari said I scored highest on that damn Hal scan.”

  “And they weren’t kidding when they said you were too compatible for your own good. The problem was, they found out the hard way.”

  “So, my altered DNA is making me more receptive to whatever residual Speaker RNA is left over in my head. It has to be why I’m thinking in Hal terms, of Hal places.” She wrapped her arms close about her head. “God, that dance with Raqella at the launch party. No wonder he was so spooked, that was Hal behavior.”

  “Most likely. It’s analogous to writing over the memory drive in a computer. Theoretically, once you erase data, it’s gone. Only that isn’t always the case. You’ll always have missed sectors, temporary files that didn’t get the word, the command won’t be as globally comprehensive as you assumed. And that’s in a linearly configured data base. The mind’s holographic, the imagery’s physical as much as analytical.”

  “Activity triggers response.”

  “Flashbacks from your subconscious, that sort of thing.”

  “Terriffic! I still don’t get it, though”—she levered herself up on her elbows and for the first time looked towards her friend—“Ciari exhibited physical manifestations of the genemod, even after the Hal flushed it from his system. Why didn’t I, if the process took so much deeper with me?”

  “It had time to set with him, to become part of his physicality. We got to figure, they knew they’d made a major mistake with you fairly quick off the mark and tried their best to rectify it. Fact is, Ace, in all sorts of little ways, you are different.”

  Nicole let herself collapse once more to the ground.

  “And that’s what Alex discovered.”

  “Hacking through your medicals. I got to hand it to the man; he was a neurotic asshole, but he was one of a kind. Right up there with Baumier and Feinman. I mean, Nicole, I never knew how good—and I mean really good—I was until I started going over his stuff. Brilliant doesn’t begin to describe him.”

  “Still, Amy put things together.”

  “Only what was there to begin with. She followed Alex’s lead, she doesn’t have anywhere near the capability to expand on it. Alex played with electronics and software like it was a jazz improv; he made most of it up as he went along. Amy needs a score. She can replicate what he did, she can’t make up anything new on her own.

  “As a consequence, Lamplighter is a user-unique system. Your genetic structure’s already primed to accept the interstitial overlay, and the extraordinary data base Alex built of you enabled him to custom configure software to match.” Hana chuckled but without much humor. “That’s what Amy’s team’s been doing for the better part of five years, trying to establish a similar base for other subjects.”

  “All they have to do is live in that effing telemetry skinsuit for as long as I did.”

  “Believe me, they tried. Believe me, they failed. Big time. Somewhere in there was the intuitive leap of genius that made the difference, but Amy can’t see it and Alex didn’t write it down. Probably because it seemed so obvious to him, the next natural step in the process.”

  “How about you? Could you find a way?”

  Hana didn’t answer, and Nicole found she couldn’t bear to wait for her reply, didn’t want to hear it when it finally came.

  Instead, she said, “If the Hal couldn’t erase the effects of their Speaker virus... ”

  “That could be a problem, all right. It certainly was for Alex at that point.”

  “You know there’s no way in Hell I’m going to do this.”

  Hana nodded, but something in her face made Nicole sit straight up and face her.

  “God damn it, are you saying I should?”

  “I honestly don’t know. There’s no way to establish a partial interface. The process looks to be all or nothing. Even Virtual Reality can’t do more than echo the expanse of sensory input, and there’s no way to replicate how you’ll deal with it.”

  “There’s no fucking guarantee I can deal with it!”

  “No, actually, there isn’t. Though Alex’s models... ”

  “Computer models are only as good as the baseline information, and you just said he was making most of that up as he went along!” By the time she finished, she was on her feet and nearly screaming, the force and fury of her voice turning heads throughout the Garden.

  “Hei,” her friend said simply, in Japanese.

  Nicole stood stock-still for a long time after that, demanding a silence that Hana respected, while staring upward at the false sky as though searching there for her answer. Her feet were planted shoulder width apart, her body set for a fight, her fists were even clenched. She looked to Hana like someone who’d taken a flurry of brutal body blows and was ready to return the punishment.

  At long last, without relaxing her stance, Nicole spoke in a flat and deliberately toneless voice.

  “Can you work with this?”

  “Based on the information at hand, no, not the way you need me to. I need access to the Hal records—to know precisely what they did to you and Ben. For that matter, to me and Andrei as well.”

  Nicole looked around.

  “What d’you mean?” she demanded.

  “What d’you think. Ace? Just because we haven’t had any overt repercussions doesn’t mean we were spared. The fact is, in big ways and small, we were all of us changed by our encounter with the Hal. Maybe that’s why everyone wanted us kept on Earth, to keep us from finding out.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s not a happy sitch, I agree. As far as Lamplighter’s concerned, there are a couple of hints in Alex’s literature—not so much in the specific notes, but scattered through the body of his later work—that the system would always remain in place but command protocols might be possible that would enable you to shut down the linkages at will. Actually, something like that would have to be essential, to prevent any catastrophic event aboard ship from affecting you, or vice versa. But like I said, to have more than a ghost of a trail to follow, I have to see this from the Hal perspective.”

  “You want to ask ’em?”

  “Nope. But I sure as hell mean to be there to see what happens when you do, Shavrin’s-Child.”

  Nicole made a curious, partly dismissive face at the name. Hana responded with a genuine grin.

  “Hey, Ace, think about it,” she said cheerily, in anticipation of a great fight. “You maybe got juice with the Hal you never even dreamed of. Couldn’t hurt to give it a try.”

  “Couldn’t hurt at all.” She sighed heavily. “Unlike me, right now, who seems to hurt all over. I feel pummeled.”

  “Can’t imagine why.”

  “Bugger off, Murai.”

/>   Hana held up her hands in a placating gesture. “Enough, okay? Look, how ’bout we head home, wrap ourselves up in a quilt or three, brew something warm to drink, and pop something rude and mindless in the video. And, while we’re at it, pass a note to Environmental Maintenance about the temperature in here—it’s freezing!”

  Nicole looked at her sharply, as those last words left a small cloud in the air.

  “It is freezing,” she echoed, looking at the residue of her own breath. There was more than an evening crispness to the air, it was actually cold. Then she felt the faintest of breezes stroke her cheek.

  She looked over the edge of the platform, at the whole of the Garden, and saw the glitter of the first beginnings of hoarfrost on the grass. There was less sound from the brook as well; the water still flowed over the cataract, but ice was growing from the banks.

  Suddenly she found her mouth stretching into a huge yawn-in an attempt to pull a decent breath into lungs hungry for air. Her feet were aching with cold, her bare arms not much better, and she blew into her cupped palms to keep them warm.

  Hana was on her feet beside her.

  “Systems failure,” she said to Nicole, in horror.

  “A bad one,” Nicole agreed. “It’s knocked out the environmental monitors. And the alarms as well.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Look around you, Hana, it’s happening. And we’re losing air.

  “Take the main floor,” she went on, speaking in staccato gasps, “gather up everyone here, get ’em out the main hatch. I’ll go high and check the platforms for stragglers.”

  Most seemed unaware of what was happening; the kids were still playing, enjoying themselves all the more because the ground had become suddenly slippery, while a couple strode towards the hatch, body language muttering about the chill.

  “Do you have your PortaCamp?” Nicole asked as Hana stepped onto the ramp, hoping her friend could use it to interface with the starship’s primary system to sound an alarm.

  “In the flat, I didn’t bring it with.”

  “Go then! I’ll catch up! Soon as you’re clear, flash Emergency Services and the Bridge.” Even as Nicole spoke, she wondered if the leak was confined to just the Garden, and immediately thrust that speculation from her thoughts—if it wasn’t, if more of the starship was compromised, they were all dead anyway, so what was the point worrying?

  She found a couple packing their picnic basket on the next level, and sorting their clothes as well, clearly interrupted in the middle of a very romantic date. Nicole was panting as she reached them. The pressure, she guesstimated, was the equivalent of the Rocky Mountain highlands, along the Continental Divide.

  “Downstairs, fast,” she told them in a voice that brooked neither question nor argument, “we’ve got to get out! The compartment’s decompressing.”

  The man started to protest but Nicole cut him off.

  “I’m Major Shea,” she snapped, hoping the rank would get their attention where the growing cold had failed.

  The man’s companion tugged at his arm. “She’s an officer, Jake, she must know what she’s talking about. Come on!”

  As they left, Nicole heard a final word from the woman.

  “I told you it was colder!”

  She took a quick three-sixty from the lip of the platform, saw nobody else beside the small crowd at the distant exit. Yet even as she started to follow, something struck her as out of place. She tried to dismiss it as a natural consequence of oxygen starvation, lack of air mucking up her thought processes, but she couldn’t shake the sense that she’d forgotten something important.

  She looked again, cursing the fact that the Garden was in nocturnal mode, a deep midsummer twilight that provided illumination enough to see but not terribly well. Her lungs were aching from the strain and she felt giddy; it took an effort to keep an idiot grin off her face and after a while she stopped trying. In a way, this all seemed quite delightfully funny.

  Lights. They were the key, something about lights, why couldn’t she place it, place herself, maybe now was her chance, plant herself good and proper among the blossoms and hook up with Alex once and forever!

  Movement caught her eye—one of the kids, coming towards her at a run. He tripped just before he reached her, crashing into her like a football tackle.

  “What the hell,” she gasped as she picked them both up.

  “Major,” he cried hoarsely, voice rubbed raw by his lungs’ ever more desperate need for sustenance, overlaid with fright, “the door’s locked, we can’t get out!”

  Nicole shoved her way through the crowd to the hatch. The auto function would have disabled itself automatically once the sensors detected the loss of pressure in the compartment, but by the same token it should have been sounding the most god-awful siren in the corridor beyond. She palmed the activation plate, punched in an override keycode, used her CardEx on the SlideLock.

  “We tried everything,” Hana told her quietly. “Both hatches.”

  “The manual crank?”

  “Wheel’s locked tight. Or jammed. I faked a call on the intercom, that’s why everyone’s so calm, they think help’s on the way. But that system’s trash as well.”

  Nicole looked through the door’s tiny window, to the airlock beyond, catching sight of the status board, the green of its telltales mute mockery of their situation, proclaiming the lie that all was well.

  “For what it’s worth,” Hana said, “I don’t think this is an accident.”

  Nicole didn’t bother replying directly, but instead took another survey of the cavernous chamber.

  “This was originally built as a cargo bay,” she said, “double-hulled all around, airlocks at every exit. Designed,” she added without irony, “to provide an extra measure of internal integrity in case of any accident. We could set off a bomb in here and nobody outside would know it.”

  Lights, she thought suddenly, making the connection at last, looking at the board once more, then at the crowd around her. Thirteen lights, but only a dozen people; someone’s still missing!

  “Shit!”

  “What?” From Hana.

  “We’re short a body.”

  Tough luck, she told herself. The group had problems of its own, no time and less air to waste on a search for someone probably more dead now than alive. Didn’t matter anyway, they’d all be dead themselves before long. Stop it, she snapped silently, think! Simulators, tests, everything she’d gone through since coming aboard, every moment of training leading up to it—wasn’t there something in all that mess to help them?

  A teasing wisp of memory prompted a look over everyone’s heads up the slope of the main floor knoll.

  “There’s another way out, isn’t there?”

  Nicole shook her head. “I’m not sure.” A silly little fact actually, an addendum to the original construction schematics she’d found while reading the Constitution’s history, so obscure it wasn’t mentioned on the Master Plans.

  Slimmest of hopes, nothing else to grasp.

  There was a small cairn at the crest, bearing the initials of the men and women who’d built the Garden. The others huddling about her, close together for warmth and comfort, Nicole tried to find the switch she was more than half convinced didn’t even exist, raging inside at the lack of sensation in her fingers, afraid she wouldn’t even realize when she touched it.

  She found an indentation at the base of the cairn, her numb hand pressed, and she heard an outcry from someone in the crowd at a hissing sound and the solid thunk of locking bolts pulling free. A sod-covered catch bar lifted out of the ground, to be grabbed by as many hands as could fit so the hatch it was fastened to could be hauled open. There was nothing pretty about the space below—it was bare and functional and utterly utilitarian.

  “What is that?” someone demanded.

  “Maintenance access,” she gasped. “These work alleys are isolated from the main compartments; pressure loss out here shouldn’t have any affect. It al
so runs on its own dedicated communications network. Find a CallBox, you should be able to sound an alarm.”

  “I thought that woman already did that,” came from another man, meaning Hana.

  “She did,” Nicole said. “We do it again and again, as long as it takes, until we get an active response.”

  Not bothering a whit about ceremony, she hustled the people down the ladder—handing the two stuporous children down into waiting arms—then, instead of following, she reached aside to close the hatch shut.

  “Nicole,” cried Hana, lunging for her, “what are you doing?”

  “One more left, remember?”

  “It’s too late, you haven’t a chance, it’s suicide!”

  “Hana, I have to try!”

  Another sweep of the meadow, then her eyes went to the only place the missing person could be—the topmost platform. The other thing she’d forgotten. No sense in recriminations, but she mentally kicked herself anyway. Then she began to climb.

  She didn’t see the body until she fell over it.

  Fur, was her first thought as she hauled it close to her, who even wears fur anymore, especially on the Frontier? No need, really, in a spacecraft’s controlled environment.

  Then, she started laughing at the absurdity—given what’s happening, she decided, a coat of fur ain’t such a dumb idea after all. The effort left her silly and barely awake.

  No more laughing, she told herself, quite sternly—which in turn almost provoked some more—can’t afford the air.

  With a snarl, because she’d found an adult, she heaved the bonelessly limp form to its feet. And just stood. Confused, totally lost, befuddled as a lifetime drunk, not knowing where to go or even what next to do. She felt so sleepy, fella here had the right idea, just curl up and give yourself over to the cold, nice cold, considerate and gentle cold, lulling you into the sleep from which you’ll never waken.

  “Sounds good to me,” she breathed so faintly she couldn’t even raise a cloud.

  Giving up so easily, chided a familiar voice. That’s not the Nicole Shea I remember.

  She stared Wearily, trying to fixate on a face to go with the words that sounded surprisingly close and clear in her mind.