Artificial Condition--The Murderbot Diaries

by Martha Wells

  Tapan and Maro looked at Rami. Te hesitated, then set ter jaw and said, “I’ll stay. You two go.”

  “No,” Maro said instantly, “we’re not leaving you.” Tapan added, “We’re in this together.”

  Rami’s face almost crumpled, their support weakening ter when the prospect of death hadn’t. Te controlled terself and nodded tightly. Te looked at me and said, “We’ll stay.”

  I didn’t react visibly, because I’m used to clients making bad decisions, and I was getting a lot of practice at controlling my expression. “You can’t keep this meeting. They lost track of you when the shuttle didn’t dock at its scheduled slot. You have to keep that advantage.”

  “But we have to have the meeting,” Tapan protested. “We can’t get our work back otherwise.”

  Yes, I often want to shake my clients. No, I never do. “Tlacey has no intention of giving you back your work. She lured you here to kill you.”

  “Yes, but—” Tapan began.

  “Tapan, just hush and listen,” Maro interrupted, clearly exasperated.

  Rami looked stubborn, but asked, “Then what should we do?”

  Technically, this didn’t have to be my problem. I was here now and didn’t need them anymore. I could lose them in the crowd and leave them to deal with their murderous ex-employer all on their own.

  But they were clients. Even after I’d hacked my governor module, I’d found it impossible to abandon clients I hadn’t chosen. I’d made an agreement with these clients as a free agent. I couldn’t leave. I kept my sigh internal. “You can’t meet Tlacey at her compound. You’ll pick the spot.”

  It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do.

  * * *

  My clients picked a food service place in the center of the port. It was on a raised platform, the tables and chairs arranged in groups, with displays floating above advertising various port and contractor services and information about the different mining installations. The displays also functioned as camera and recording chaff, so the place was a popular spot for business meetings.

  Rami, Tapan, and Maro had picked a table and were nervously fiddling with the drinks they had ordered from one of the bots drifting around. They had put in a comm call to Tlacey, and were waiting for a representative to arrive.

  The security system in this public area was more sophisticated than ShuttleSecSys but not by much. I had gotten in far enough to monitor emergency traffic and get views from the cameras focused on our immediate area. I felt pretty confident. I was standing three meters from the table, pretending to look at the ad displays and examining the map of the installations I had found in the public feed. There were plenty of abandoned dig sites marked, as well as tube accesses that went off into apparently nowhere. Ganaka Pit had to be one of them.

  ART said in my ear, There must be an accessible information archive. Ganaka Pit’s existence would not be deleted from it. The absence would be too obvious to researchers.

  That depended on the research. Someone working on strange synthetics would obviously care about where they were found, but not necessarily about what company had dug them up, or why that company wasn’t around anymore. But whoever had removed Ganaka Pit from the map would have been trying to obscure its existence from casual journalists, not erase it entirely from the memory of the population.

  ART’s data had been correct; there were other SecUnits on this moon. The map showed logos from five bond companies that offered SecUnits, including my company, at seven of the most remote installations where exploration for mineral veins was still ongoing. They would be there to defend the claim from theft and to keep the miners and other employees from injuring each other as part of the bond guarantee. No SecUnits would travel through the port except as inert cargo in transport boxes or repair cubicles, so that was one less thing to worry about. My altered configuration might fool humans and augmented humans, but not other SecUnits.

  If they saw me, they would alert their SecSystems. They wouldn’t have a choice. And they wouldn’t want one. If anybody knows how dangerous rogue SecUnits are, it’s other SecUnits.

  That was when I felt the ping.

  I told myself I’d mistaken it for something else. Then it happened again. That’s a big uh-oh.

  Something was looking for SecUnits. Not just bots, specifically SecUnits, and it was close. It hadn’t pinged me directly, though if I’d had a working governor module, I would have been compelled to answer.

  Three humans approached the table my clients were sitting at. Rami whispered into ter feed, “That’s Tlacey. I didn’t expect her to come herself.” Two of the humans were large and male and one of them lengthened his stride to reach the table. Maro had seen him and from the look on her face I knew this was not going to be a greeting. Scan showed he was armed.

  I moved between him and the table. I put a hand up at his chest height and said, “Stop.”

  On most contracts this was as far as I was allowed to go with a human until they made physical contact. But you’d be surprised how often this works, if you do it right. Though that was when I was wearing my armor with the helmet opaqued. Standing here in normal human clothes with my human face showing made it a whole different thing. But it wasn’t like he could hurt me by hitting me and he hadn’t drawn his weapon yet.

  I could have torn through him like tissue paper.

  He didn’t know that, but he must have been able to tell from my face that I wasn’t afraid of him. I checked the security camera to see what I looked like, and decided I looked bored. That wasn’t unusual, because I almost always looked bored while I was doing my job, it was just impossible to tell when I was in my armor.

  He visibly regrouped and said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  My clients had shoved their chairs back and were on their feet. Rami said, “This is our security consultant.”

  He stepped back, and glanced uncertainly at the other two, the second male human bodyguard and Tlacey, who was an augmented human female.

  I dropped my arm but didn’t move. I had clear shots at all three of them, but that was a worst-case scenario. For me, at least. Humans can miss a lot of little clues, but me being able to fire energy weapons from my arms would be something of a red flag. I diverted just enough attention to scan the security camera feeds for whatever it was that had pinged me.

  I caught an image on a camera across the public area, near one of the entrance tunnels. The figure standing near the edge of the seating area didn’t match what I was expecting to see and I had to review it again before I understood. It wasn’t wearing armor and its physical configuration didn’t match SecUnit standard. It had a lot of hair, silver with blue and purple on the ends, pulled back and braided like Tapan’s but in a much more complicated pattern. Its facial features were different from mine, but all Units’ features are different, assigned randomly based on the human cloned material that’s used to make our organic parts. Its arms were bare, and there was no metal showing and no gun ports. This was not a SecUnit.

  I was looking at a sexbot.

  That is not the official designation, ART said.

  The official designation is ComfortUnit but everybody knows what that means.

  Sexbots aren’t allowed to walk around in human areas without orders, any more than murderbots. Someone must have sent it here.

  ART poked me hard enough to make me twitch. I snapped out of it and ran my recording back a little to catch up on what was happening.

  Tlacey had stepped forward. “And just why do you need a security consultant?”

  Rami took a breath. I hit ter feed, secured a private connection between ter, Tapan, and Maro, and told ter, Don’t answer that. Don’t mention the attempt on the shuttle. Just stick to business. It was an impulse. Tlacey had come here expecting an angry confrontation; that was why she had brought armed bodyguards. We had an advantage now; we weren’t dead, and they were off balance and we wanted to keep them that way.

  Rami let the breath out, tapped my feed in acknowled
gment, then said, “We’re here to talk about our files.”

  Maro, who had realized what I was trying to do, told Rami, Keep going, don’t even let them sit down.

  Sounding more confident, Rami continued, “Deleting our personal work was not part of our employment contract. But we’ll agree to your proposal that we return our signing bonus in exchange for our files.”

  On the security cameras, I watched the sexbot turn and leave the public area via the tunnel directly behind it.

  Tlacey said, “The entire bonus?” She clearly hadn’t expected them to agree.

  Maro leaned forward. “We opened an account with Umro to hold the funds. We can transfer it to you as soon as you give us the files.”

  Tlacey’s jaw moved as she spoke in her private feed. The two bodyguards eased back. Tlacey stepped over and took a chair at my clients’ table. After a moment, Rami sat down, and Tapan and Maro followed suit.

  I kept part of my attention on the negotiation, and went back to the public feed. I started pulling historical data, looking for any irregular activity around the time of my contract here.

  While my clients were talking, and while I sorted through the data with ART peering over my shoulder again, I was watching the security cameras. I noted two more potential threats enter the area. Both were augmented humans. I had noted three potential threats already sitting at adjacent tables. (All three exhibited a curious lack of attention toward the confrontation occurring near the center of the seating area. The other humans and augmented humans in the immediate area had watched it with open or surreptitious curiosity.)

  ART poked me. I see it, I told it. The search had turned up a series of notices posted around the right timeframe. They were warnings that changes in shipments of raw materials and supplies to outlying installations would cause diversions in the passenger tube routes. (The tube was a small-scale transit system that took passengers around the port and service centers and had private lines going out to the closer mining installations.) Later notices mentioned a new route that had been constructed to compensate for the diversion.

  That was it. Reading between the lines, you could see that the service contractors had had to build a new tube route to bypass the tunnels that had led to a mining installation that had abruptly closed. That had to be the site of Ganaka Pit.

  Other pit closures had been accompanied by local interest articles and excessive social feed interest in bankruptcy filings and the effect on the associated service companies. There was nothing like that about this closure. Someone had paid to have those postings deleted from the public feed.

  The conversation was concluding. Tlacey stood up, nodded to my clients, and walked away from the table. Rami’s expression was a grimace of doubt. Maro looked grim and Tapan somewhere between confused and angry.

  I closed the search and stepped over to the table. Watching Tlacey and her bodyguards leave, Rami said, “It was a bad idea to come here.”

  Tapan protested, “She said tomorrow…”

  Maro shook her head. “It’s more lies. She isn’t going to give us the files. She could have done it here, if she was going to do it. She could have done it over the comm while we were on the transit ring.” She looked up at me. “I wasn’t sure I believed you about the shuttle, but now…”

  I was keeping track of my potential threat list on the security cameras. “We need to go,” I told them. “We’ll talk about this somewhere else.”

  As we left, one potential threat got up to follow us. I tapped ART to keep an eye on the others, just in case they weren’t innocent bystanders so deep in their feeds they really hadn’t noticed anything.

  I had marked a few possible routes on the station map, and my favorite one was through a pedestrian tunnel that curved out away from the main living areas. There were various accesses along it leading to different tube stations, but it was not a popular route. I tapped Rami’s feed and told ter to take it toward the interchange where the largest hotel was. Listening in, Maro whispered, “We can’t afford that one.”

  You won’t be staying there, I told them on the feed. The brochure on the public feed promised a high security lobby area and a fast tube access to the public shuttle slots.

  We reached the tunnel and started down it. It was close to ten meters wide and four meters high, well-lit enough for walking down the center, but the sides were shadowy with darkened branching tunnels. There were security cameras, but the system monitoring them was not sophisticated. The company would have shit itself over the possible danger to bonded clients and the missed opportunity to data mine conversations.

  There were other humans in the tunnel. Some miners in coveralls and jackets with logos from the various installations, but most were in civilian work clothes, either techs or workers for the support companies. They moved quickly and stayed in groups.

  After eight minutes of walking, most of the other humans in the tunnel had turned off to one of the tube access points. I sent through the feed, Just keep walking, don’t stop. I’ll meet you in the lobby. I dropped back into one of the darker branching tunnels. My clients kept moving and didn’t look back at me, though I could tell Tapan wanted to.

  On the cameras I watched Potential Threat/New Target make his way up the tunnel, walking quickly. He was joined by two new humans, now designated Target Two and Target Three. They passed me and I came out of the tube access and followed at a distance. I scanned them for energy weapons and found no readings. All three Targets wore jackets and pants with deep side pockets. I marked seven locations where knives or extendable batons could be carried.

  When they caught sight of my clients, the Targets slowed down but continued to reduce the distance between them. I knew they were probably reporting to someone on their feed, asking for instructions. Whoever it was didn’t have control of the security cameras, at least not yet.

  I followed, watching the targets through my eyes, through the security cameras, watching myself to make sure I wasn’t drawing attention, that no one was following me. ART kept quiet, though I could tell it was interested in watching me work.

  Then the last group of miners between me and the Targets turned into a tube access. We were in a bend of the tunnel and there was no one between my clients and the next bend some fifty meters ahead, and the security cameras showed me the tunnel was empty behind me. I needed to get this over with. I turned into the tube access behind the miners.

  I stopped at the top of the tube access while the miners boarded the capsule. The door hissed as it closed and the capsule moved away. On security camera view, Target Two’s jaw moved, indicating that he was speaking sub-vocally in his feed. Then the camera’s feed cut off.

  I turned the corner back into the tunnel and started to run.

  It was a calculated risk, as I couldn’t move at top speed without revealing I wasn’t human. But I managed to arrive just as Target One reached Rami and grabbed the sleeve of ter jacket. I broke his arm and slammed an elbow into his chin, then swung him into Target Two, who had turned toward me with the knife he had been approaching Maro with. Target Two accidentally (I’m guessing here; maybe they just didn’t care for each other) stabbed Target One. Target Two staggered sideways and I dropped Target One, and broke Target Two’s kneecap. Target Three had had time to lift his baton and now hit me across the left side of my head and shoulder which, granted, annoyed me a little, but I’ve had hauler bots hit me harder than that by accident. I blocked the second blow with my left arm, snapped his collarbone with one punch, and smashed his hip with another.

  He was lucky I wasn’t a lot annoyed.

  All three Targets were on the floor, and Two was the only one who was still conscious, though he was curled up and whimpering. I turned to my clients.

  Rami had a hand over ter mouth, Maro was frozen in place, staring, and Tapan had thrown her hands up in the air. I said in the feed, Go to the hotel, wait for me in the lobby. Don’t run, walk.

  Maro came out of shock first. She nodded hard, caught Rami’s ar
m, and poked Tapan’s shoulder. Rami turned to go, but Tapan said, “Security?”

  I knew what she was asking. “They told somebody to cut the cameras. That’s why you need to leave now.” The public feed up on the transit ring had said there was no overall security, but the security companies for the different service installations and contractors were supposed to take responsibility for the public areas nearest their territory. This spot had obviously been carefully calculated to be out of range of any immediate assistance by whoever had helped the Targets by cutting the camera feed. I wasn’t expecting an immediate response, but we did need to move relatively quickly.

  Rami whispered, “Come on,” and they started away, walking fast but not running.

  I turned to the Target that was still conscious and pressed down on the artery in his neck until he passed out.

  I started away, walking at a normal pace. I was deep enough into the camera system to delete the temporary storage on the cameras ahead of and behind the deactivated camera. That would help obscure the issue for anybody trying to figure out what had happened. But Tlacey had seen me, and she would know. I was just hoping the kids listened to me this time.

  * * *

  I reached the interchange where various access tunnels and tube stations met, with a scatter of pop-up stands selling packaged food, feed interfaces, toiletries, and other things humans liked. It wasn’t crowded but there was a steady flow of foot traffic. The hotel entrance was on the far side.

  The lobby was built on various platforms overlooking a holo sculpture of an open chasm filled with a giant crystalline structure growing out of the walls. From the notations in the feed, it was supposed to be educational, but I had serious doubts about whether the mines on RaviHyral looked like that. Especially after the mining bots got to them.

  My clients were on the same platform as the check-in area, near the railing around the sculpture’s artificial chasm, sitting on a round backless couch thing that looked more like a decorative object than furniture.