Gravity of a Distant Sun

by R. E. Stearns

  Iridian’s fist clenched in a handful of the Odin Razum guide’s jacket and shirt. He choked, but Iridian ignored him. Rio had no business using Adda like that. Iridian’s right hand let go of his collar and dropped to the knife hilt at her hip.

  It’s a trick, Adda subvocalized. I’m fine.

  “No,” the influenced people moaned over Adda’s assurances. They spoke at different intervals and pitches, the same way they had when they’d decided that the crew was authorized to enter the water treatment plant. This time they also shared the same level of volume and panic. Iridian let out a long, shuddering breath, but she kept her hand on her knife. Adda was all right. She was all right.

  “Then let us out,” Rio shouted. Adda flinched under Rio’s grip. If anyone else had been holding Adda by the throat, Iridian would’ve put a knife in them by now.

  Rio had looked out for Pel on Barbary Station before Iridian and Adda got there. Hell, Iridian had watched Rio babysit a toddler on Barbary. Rio had been gentler than a kitten with the little guy. But she was a professional warrior. On some jobs, terrible acts of violence were her daily business. When the hallway emptied of Odin Razum as quickly as it’d filled, that just seemed like the rational response to Rio’s threat.

  Iridian shook the man who’d guided them this far. “Get us the fuck out of this place. And Rio?” She glared over her shoulder, and Rio turned herself and Adda to face her. “We’re having a talk about this later.”

  Rio’s eyes widened. “Yes, ma’am.” Maybe terrible acts were her day-to-day, but Iridian would be damned if she let anyone put their hands on Adda like that. If Rio hadn’t asked Adda first, there’d be hell to pay.

  The guide started walking again, and Rio let Adda go and took a big step back from her, giving her all the hallway space she could offer. “I’m all right,” Adda said aloud.

  Iridian didn’t trust herself to say anything other than “Good.” She gave the guide a shove in the back that made him stumble ahead of her faster.

  * * *

  Iridian’s crew left their Odin Razum guide at the elevator, returned to the temple, and accepted tea from Shingetsu in the pillowed meditation room while they summarized precautions for using tech connected to an unsupervised intelligence. The warnings barely affected Shingetsu’s high spirits at all.

  Iridian was clearly not emphasizing how dangerous these AIs were. “I’m telling you this once, and you’ll just have to believe me. This station’s AI has been using those drones to talk to another AI, and that other AI is awakened. Do you understand what that means?”

  Shingetsu frowned, finally. “An artificial intelligence that has had its cognition limiters removed. Does this mean the ITA will take the drones away?”

  Adda shook her head. “No,” Iridian said for her. “I tried to tell them about Casey—that’s what the awakened intelligence calls itself, if you can believe that—but by the time the ITA tried to catch it, the ship it rides around in wasn’t where I said it was. As far as the rest of the universe is concerned, it doesn’t exist. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s trying to get to Adda and me, specifically. It can’t yet, we don’t think.” Iridian waited for Adda’s nod before continuing, “Or we’d still be up to our necks in Odin Razum, but it’ll find a way in and it’s damned good at influencing people. We think it contacted you once already, about us being Tash’s last crew.”

  By Shingetsu’s expression, this wasn’t the first paranoid theory the temple staff had heard, maybe even today. “We’ll be careful,” she said, and Adda winced. Adda had said almost the same thing before she climbed into the workspace generator. “Reuniting families is worth it.”

  “Better be.” Pel lounged across three seats’ worth of cushions with his right, bright red pupil larger than his left, navy-blue one. He looked like he’d found some kind of intoxicant that was keeping him calm despite the fact that this would’ve been the first he’d heard of Casey’s attempt to turn Mairie against them.

  He had a point, though. They’d done some good for people worse off than them, but they’d put themselves in terrible danger without making much progress toward buying supplies and shelter on Yăo Station. At least the former ITA prisoners wouldn’t have to worry about the nannite cultures inside them for much longer.

  “If you run into trouble, or you hear from anything calling itself ‘Casey,’ Adda and I have experience with AI influence,” Iridian said. “We may be able to help. That’s over and above our end of the deal, mind.”

  Shingetsu smiled. “And I will uphold my end. The water we discussed is here.” She removed a blanket from a pallet of liter pouches. “As to the second part, we coordinate with a clinic when people come to us hurt or ill. They’ll clean your nervous systems of the nannite cultures.”

  Rio narrowed her eyes and leaned toward Shingetsu slightly. Shingetsu leaned away precisely the same amount. “Does that clinic know what kind of culture it is?” Rio asked.

  “They’ll see, when they begin treatment.” Shingetsu sounded genuinely sorry for the intrusion on their personal information. “They understand that sometimes cultures must come out before the appointed time, no matter the reason they were introduced. There’s no point in reporting the removal from here, even when it’s possible to do so. The ITA won’t come. And, so you aren’t angry that I didn’t tell you,” she added, sounding even more apologetic, “the removal process can be painful.”

  “Great,” Iridian grumbled while Rio, Noor, and Wiley swore.

  * * *

  Yăo Station was too small for public transit. They walked from the temple to the clinic, past what looked like two ragged families of vendors endeavoring to attract the same potential buyer to their piles of dubious merchandise. The empty cargo hauler tracks that seemed to be the accepted replacement for sidewalks led from the port to the entertainment mod. There, predictably, they lost Pel. He waved and then disappeared into a small crowd gathered beneath an oversize rotating wine bottle, which glowed red.

  A few seconds later, Adda’s comp buzzed its comm alert, attracting her full attention to whatever message she’d received. Iridian caught Pel’s name on the projection. The wording was much too slang-savvy to have been composed by an AI.

  Now that Adda was otherwise occupied, Iridian slowed to walk beside Rio. “About that trick you pulled with Adda,” Iridian said quietly.

  “I am so sorry,” said Rio. “I didn’t hurt her, did I?”

  “Not that she’s mentioned,” and Iridian had sure as hell checked Adda’s neck for bruises. There hadn’t been any. “It was a good idea, don’t get me wrong. But even if it’s for a good cause, don’t put your hands on her unless we talk it out ahead of time. Even if it’s fake. I’m not saying it makes sense, because it doesn’t. I trust you, and that trick got results. Just don’t spring that on us. If I wasn’t holding that Odin Razum guy, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”

  “I understand,” Rio murmured. After walking in silence for a moment, she added, “For a second there, you looked like you were going to gut me.”

  Iridian huffed a quiet laugh. “I thought about it.”

  CHAPTER 15 Days until launch: 30

  The clinic was the first part of the station Adda had seen that looked like it was being used for its original purpose. Adda, Iridian, Rio, Wiley, and Noor walked past plastic benches with torn padding to a reception counter that somebody had pounded on with something round and heavy enough to leave dents. The person behind the counter was a human instead of a weak intelligence’s projected figure. An intelligence’s figure would’ve had no use for the Earth-style shotgun resting in clear view on a shelf behind the countertop.

  When Iridian slowly approached to tell him, “We’re the ones Shingetsu told you about,” he pointed to the doorway to their left. Its door was stuck partway down, and everyone except Adda had to duck under it. After all the unexpected difficulties Adda had navigated since Ceres, Shingetsu doing exactly what she said she’d do was a welcome relief.

  In
the waiting room beyond were two more armed and armored people and someone in clothes made of easily cleaned fabric that all medical professionals wore. The nurse, or at least the person dressed like one, leaned on the wall, watching them. “We’ve got nannite cultures that need to be taken out,” Iridian told the nurse. “I’ll go first.” The nurse led Iridian back to an exam room and gave her a pill-size vitals monitor to swallow.

  Adda followed without looking up from composing search routines and messages about her neural implant net, which she’d send as soon as they got the opportunity to use the drones they’d retrieved for Shingetsu. Device manufacturers sometimes outsourced their firmware development, and she wanted to make sure she notified the correct people of the vulnerability allowing accelerated influence.

  Iridian and the nurse must’ve been talking while she’d been reading, because Iridian put an arm around Adda’s waist and said, “She’s my wife.”

  The nurse’s confused expression eased. “Ah. And you want her to come with you?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Iridian said. It hadn’t occurred to Adda that she might’ve stayed in the other room. Iridian always wanted company when she had to go through something health-related and unpleasant.

  The nurse said, “Of course,” and consulted vis comp. “And your vitals are . . . You’re new here, aren’t you.”

  “Just got in a few days ago,” said Iridian.

  “Exercise.” The nurse’s order sounded like a tired, hopeless repetition rather than medical advice ve expected Iridian to follow. Not that Iridian would need any encouragement in that regard. “Our grav is so low that if you do not use your muscles, you lose them. If you are lucky, I’ll see you back here when the ship you try to leave on powers up and your heart can’t handle one g anymore.” Ve reached into a cabinet and selected a device that trailed a long cable. The nurse opened it and held the device toward Iridian. “Your hand.”

  When Iridian’s hand was situated in the device’s finger-shaped grooves, the nurse closed the lid over it. Light like a capillary scanner flashed inside. The cable connected to a projector, which, a moment after Adda had located it, spread data across the floor before it redirected the output to the nurse’s comp.

  “Ah, the new ones.” The nurse made a disgusted face at whatever ve read on vis comp. “Into the pod. I am sorry, it will not take so long, but—”

  “It’ll hurt, yeah?” Iridian squared her shoulders. “Everything about these damned nannites does. I have implants.” She touched a spot at her throat near the mic for her and Adda’s communication system, a spot too far behind her ear to be the speaker/translator’s actual location, although the mistake was probably not important enough to her medical treatment to require Adda to correct it, and a spot on her palm near the control switch.

  The nurse flicked something on vis comp. The projector filled a wall with readouts. Some of the numbers referenced the components’ power draw and metallic composition. “They should not be affected,” the nurse said. “Although I am also seeing another cranial implant, which we’ll have to work carefully around.”

  Iridian stilled. “What is it? Where is it?”

  “Let’s see if I can show you.” The nurse held vis comp to the side of Iridian’s head for a moment, then said, “It is rendering now.”

  “Did the ITA do that?” Adda asked.

  Iridian swore viciously. “They had to have done it to keep us in . . . Half the time we were on Venus we were in a gods-damned sim. And I thought at the time, ‘Can you do that without implants?’ I guess you fucking can’t.”

  In addition to the readouts on the wall, the projector lit the small room’s floor with a cross section of Iridian’s brain. A dark dot, not even a centimeter in diameter, was circled in red. “That is the one I am talking about,” the nurse said. “You say the ITA put it there?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Iridian swallowed hard and reached for Adda’s hand. They held on to each other hard for a long moment. Iridian’s palm was slippery with sweat. “I can’t believe we went through all that with something in my . . . Gods, they could’ve put anything in there,” Iridian said. “All the people in the waiting area must have one of these too. Can you take it out?”

  “Absolutely not.” The nurse looked almost as disturbed about the unwanted implant as Iridian did. “Our little clinic just does not have the equipment for that surgery. I am sorry. We can remove the nannite culture, though.”

  Iridian nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Adda returned to the spot she’d found where she wouldn’t block the medical projections, backed against cabinets opposite the pod, watching the nurse help Iridian in. “I’d like to stay,” she said.

  The nurse nodded, and Iridian caught Adda’s eyes. “It’ll be fine, babe.”

  It had to be done. When the culture had been activated on the Ceres Station street outside Adda’s hospital room, Iridian had fallen down screaming while the ITA agents came for her. And anything people did with nannites, the awakened intelligences would find a way to do too.

  The pod hummed. Its display included Iridian’s vital signs and a countdown timer, along with abbreviations Adda couldn’t interpret. Iridian’s groans became something Adda needed to distract herself from. The threat of the ITA using its nannite cultures against them would be gone by the end of the day, so she could focus on their group’s other problems.

  Her neural implant net, and to be safe she’d assume Noor’s as well, were making it easier for intelligences to influence them. Depending on how Pel’s pseudo-organic eyes connected to his brain and the digital information spaces on station intranets, that might be a problem for him as well. And now Iridian had a neural implant too, and although it was much smaller than Adda’s or Noor’s, it was wireless. It definitely wouldn’t tell Iridian, or Rio and Wiley for that matter, if it connected to something that also connected to Casey.

  The last time Casey had influenced Adda, she’d nearly killed Iridian. She had to stop that from happening again.

  Casey didn’t even need traditional influence to turn people against each other, as it’d demonstrated when it sent Major O.D. proof that Tash had been involved in his father’s death. The awakened intelligences could find anybody’s weak points, and they’d get better at that with every attempt. Adda’s were probably obvious to them.

  Given enough time, they’d motivate somebody to bring enough of Casey to Yăo Station to influence Adda again, although they hadn’t done that yet. As Casey’s experience with Shingetsu and Mairie would’ve taught it, orders from unknown sources weren’t always followed. Mairie’s interaction with Casey, in particular, was limited but alarming.

  The closed pod door muffled Iridian’s shriek, but Adda was halfway across the room and squeezing herself between the suspended projector and the nurse before she had time to think. Text and numbers swung over her shoes. The nurse’s hand gripped her upper arm and hauled her away from the pod. Adda reached out for the pod, but the low gravity left her unbalanced and her hands slipped off the pod’s door. Her reaction was irrational. This procedure was terrible, but necessary.

  “The machine is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.” The nurse’s voice was kind, but firm, as ve stepped between Adda and the pod. “It is hard to hear, I know. But after, nobody can hurt her with this again.”

  That was the point. Adda used the doorway to orient herself. When she’d relaxed as much as she could, the nurse let go of her arm. She should’ve been finding out more about the station and looking for the next person who would pay them for something they could do, instead of hovering here when she couldn’t get her balance. But she wanted to be here when the procedure was over.

  The nurse glanced down at Adda’s hand. The cut from the workspace generator’s broken lid had stopped bleeding at some point, but her fingers still bore patches of dried blood. “I can fix that while we wait,” the nurse said.

  “Just close it up so it doesn’t get infected,” said Adda. “We can’
t afford anti-scarring.” The nurse nodded and rummaged through a cupboard for more tools.

  As a distraction, Adda reviewed what her trackers had found about the awakened intelligences. The Charon’s Coin was in Ceres stationspace, but the trackers following the Apparition and the Casey Mire Mire had sent almost no data. It was possible that they were traveling too far from the reliable routes and Patchwork buoys for Adda’s trackers to find them.

  One of Casey’s few position notes was nearly inside the orbits of Jupiter’s outermost moons, several days ago. That was too close for comfort, but none of her indicators showed it coming any closer. Buoy coverage among the populated Jovian moons would’ve enabled excellent tracking. Adda started the analyses she could set up without a workspace and her old comp’s custom tools, concentrating to tune out the sounds of Iridian’s treatment.

  Almost an hour later, the pod chimed to notify everyone that its treatment was complete. Iridian stumbled into Adda’s arms, sweating and tired. They held each other while the nurse confirmed that Adda hadn’t been infected by the same nannite culture. The influence treatment clinic could’ve done that, but they hadn’t. They would’ve realized that nannite cultures used a kind of AI to do what they did.

  “That sucked,” Iridian muttered as Adda held her arm to steady her on the way back to the waiting room. “No more getting arrested.”

  The intelligences had used the ITA against Adda and Iridian before they’d used anybody else. It was one of many reasons that Adda was working so hard to get away from them. But anything as powerful, as fascinating, as connected, as new as the awakened intelligences would be dangerous. Humanity had never encountered anything like what the intelligences had become. Despite the danger she and Iridian were in, she desperately wanted to protect herself well enough to learn what the awakened intelligences’ aims might be.