When she was done, she pulled herself up the doorframe to look her setup over. She’d learned a lot in the two years she’d spent in colonial space. She was probably the universe’s foremost expert on interacting with awakened intelligences, even though she still had almost no idea what she was doing. She no longer spent every minute in low gravity nauseated. She’d come to trust her screwup little brother with her life. They’d both almost gotten each other killed multiple times, but they’d survived and they still loved each other.
Once she convinced Casey that it couldn’t manipulate her, one way or the other, that was it. Either it would have the Apparition shoot them down out here, too far off the reliable routes for the ITA to save them even if it wanted to, or she’d convince Casey to leave them alone. What she most wanted to learn was what Casey had been trying to do all this time. Gods, but she hoped she’d be finding out soon.
Iridian repositioned Adda in the space above her generator to make her easier to kiss. I’d rather live a few more free minutes with you than all the prison sentences and sixty-hour work weeks the rest of humanity can make up for us. Iridian’s subvocalized whisper sounded huskier than usual. Her eyes gleamed with tears that, knowing her, she wouldn’t let herself shed. “That’s always been the point. I love you, babe.”
“I love you,” said Adda.
Iridian kept Adda from running into furniture and door frames while she maneuvered herself into the main cabin. The ship was stationary now that they’d reached Casey’s coordinates. Far out among the stars in the projected window, two dark shapes drifted. Those were probably the Casey Mire Mire and the Apparition. At that distance, the smaller Charon’s Coin would be hard to identify with the naked eye. Pel, Rio, Wiley, and Gavran were all looking at the ships too.
“I thought they’d be bigger,” said Wiley.
“Nope,” said Pel, “that’s them. They’re stealthy like us.”
“Adda’s going into the generator now,” Iridian said. “I’m guessing there’ll be nothing we can do if shit goes wrong, but keep an eye out, yeah?”
Pel, who had set himself slowly spinning near the middle of the cabin, grinned at Adda where she clung to the residential cabin doorway. “Give her hell for us.”
“Good luck,” said Wiley.
“Is there anything else we can do to help, or to protect the Mayhem?” asked Rio.
“I don’t know anything about ship defense,” said Adda. “Do what Gavran says for that. I’ll be on sharpsheets so I can concentrate, so . . . Keep it down, I guess?”
“Understood, no flying music,” said Gavran. “I’d hug you, but I know you don’t like that, so no music and no hugs.”
“Thank you.” Adda hadn’t even thought of the physical contact that other people felt compelled to demonstrate in the face of impending doom. She was grateful to Gavran for heading that off.
Wiley pulled a box out from the drawer beneath his passenger couch and popped the lid open to reveal two stacks of long bags full of dark liquid. The bags’ labels identified the liquid as wine, although it didn’t look like any wine Adda had ever seen. “Since there’s not much we can do against the AIs while Adda’s talking to them, I brought something to take the edge off the wait.”
“Oh damn, that’ll help me out a lot,” said Iridian over Pel’s appreciative and extended “oh.”
“Sunan’s Landing’s finest,” said Wiley. Their reactions implied that it was a psychoactive drink. For a moment, Adda wished she could join them.
Instead she gave Iridian a quick kiss, which Iridian leaned into and turned it into the kind of kiss that inspired Pel to whoop and point obnoxiously. Then Adda was on her way toward the guest cabin and the generator, where there wouldn’t be any awkwardness at all. Mortal peril and mental instability, but no awkwardness. The door slid shut behind her. This was where she belonged.
She set a sharpsheet on her tongue. As she tucked the case into her pocket, the artificial spice-and-herb scent hit her nose and restarted her brain. When she plugged cables into her comp and nasal jack to connect them to the mobile generator, she was at just the right chemical balance with as little hardware as possible between her and the object of her focus. She felt like she was coming home. Her earbuds were buzzing with pink noise, and once she double- and triple-checked the connection instructions, she reached out to Casey.
A workspace swelled behind her eyes and a dark wave broke over her vision. A light brightened until she was looking out a ship window at a popular artist’s rendition of the solar system on the other side of Dr. Björn’s interstellar bridge project. The Thrinacia system’s sun was whiter than the one in her solar system. Four planets orbited it, appearing nearly in line, all beside the sun or between it and Adda. This place had been on her mind lately, although if she ever got to see it, she doubted it would look like this.
She stepped back. The view outside the window was still and she felt the constant falling sensation of low gravity, but she moved like she did on Earth. This, in the way of workspaces, communicated security. The connection she’d formed with Casey was protected from outside listeners.
The rest of the ship she stood in came into focus. Adda was in the main cabin of the ship Casey was installed in, the Casey Mire Mire. The cabin looked the same as it had during her and Iridian’s long, cramped escape from Barbary Station, except that the boxy drones Casey used to use to communicate in reality were whole and plugged into their wall sockets. They’d been smashed beyond repair during their last few days on Barbary.
This ship’s layout had an open bridge, with no door between her and its console. Casey’s figure stood in front of the bridge console, beside the pseudo-organic tank that had once housed all its existence. Seeing Casey’s statuesque figure in a place Adda had spent a lot of time, onyx skin reflecting the sunsim, was disconcerting. The new solar system spun slowly in a 3-D projection above the bridge console.
The next second Casey’s hand was stretched in front of itself, as if the statue had always been reaching out. Another of the workspace’s revelations swept over Adda. That sense of age that the intelligence’s figure carried represented size, or expanse, rather than time. Casey was not confined to its ship anymore.
It had expanded well beyond the ship pseudo-organic tank’s capacity, probably before Adda had even known it was awakened. Her mind, Casey, or one of Adda’s ongoing analyses had been trying to tell her that for months, ever since she’d first seen Casey’s figure in her workspace. She’d resisted the idea because it made Casey even more intimidating than it already was.
A high-level summary presented itself as rippling air temperatures throughout the cabin. Even at this level of workspace abstraction, the summary clearly described how Casey had expanded into station tanks throughout populated space, distributed but coherent beyond what current theories on intelligence development deemed possible. Adda had expected that, but it was another thing to read proof.
A sound like a downpour of rain falling on the roof made her jump, but the rainfall she remembered from Earth wouldn’t be possible in space. Casey was looking for the vulnerability in Adda’s neural implant net, and it wasn’t finding the opening it had used to manipulate Adda before. For now, Adda was safe.
Casey’s hand stopped reaching out and was suddenly touching the ship’s console, its arm a graceful arch like an ancient statue’s. The glints of sapphire deep in its eye sockets never looked away from Adda. “What are you doing?” Adda asked.
“I am fixing this.” Casey’s voice was like Iridian’s husky whisper when she subvocalized through their personal comms. Since Casey shaped the rest of its figure to resemble Iridian’s body, matching her voice would also fit into its manipulative persona. Much as Adda loved to look at Iridian, it was safer to keep her wife separate from her work. Iridian in Adda’s workspace had to represent the real Iridian and nothing else, or it’d be difficult to reach her through the workspace’s tools if Adda needed to.
“What are you fixing?” Adda wasn’t
concentrating closely enough on what Casey was doing. This intelligence demanded her full attention, and she had missed that challenge. Mairie and Ficience and even AegiSKADA had been simplistic shadows of Casey’s abilities.
The Mayhem appeared outside the window, between the Casey and the new solar system. Blazing lines of light stretched from the Casey to curl around the Mayhem, reaching toward its antenna. Casey was trying to insert itself into the Mayhem’s systems, possibly to take over the Mayhem’s well-behaved zombie copilot intelligence.
“We are not speaking efficiently,” said Casey.
In reality, something thudded against the Mayhem’s residential cabin door. Iridian shouted, “Lock it!”
Adda turned up the pink noise in her earbuds. Even if her implant was resisting Casey’s intrusions, distraction might drop her out of the workspace or make her miss the intelligence’s more common forms of manipulation. “This method of communication is fine for me,” Adda told Casey. “What is it not doing for you?”
“I cannot . . .” A blast of noise, which the workspace informed Adda was a compressed selection of sounds, came together as a concept: the in-depth understanding of something to the extent that it becomes a part of yourself.
“No, you can’t,” Adda agreed. “I don’t want that. Now, tell me what you want, that that connection would make so much easier?”
“Let me,” said Casey, “or.” A news story appeared on the wall opposite the window. Suhaila Al-Mudari, TAPnews correspondent, was saying, “Adda Karpe and Iridian Nassir were among the dead when the ITA attacked their ship in response to an anonymous report of terrorists targeting Sunan’s Landing.” Suhaila looked like she was going to cry. Beside Suhaila’s figure, a vid feed depicted Iridian’s body drifting through space, blackened and stiff.
“No,” Adda said firmly. She willed the newscast away. It flickered but remained on the wall. Adda’s inability to change the intelligences’ creations in her workspaces was a familiar source of frustration. “I don’t believe you’d do that. You need me for something. Stop threatening me and tell me what you need.”
The newscast disappeared. “You can’t leave,” said Casey.
“I don’t want to.” Adda was getting impatient and took a deep breath to regain her focus. “Has it occurred to you that I would be more willing and able to help if you stopped forcing me to do it?”
“Yes. That seemed unlikely.”
Adda smiled slightly, at this demonstration of Casey’s overfitting error and at the intermediary software’s succinct translation. Casey would’ve responded with an extensive analysis of the probabilities. “Humans do all kinds of unlikely things. Sometimes we just have to deal with the irrational reality we live in. Now, we’ve established that you cannot manipulate me using my implant, you are not going to kill me and my family, and I have no intention of leaving until you explain yourself.” The commotion from earlier was no longer audible over her pink noise, but she added, “Let’s further clarify that if you hurt anybody on the Mayhem, or cause them to hurt each other, I will be much less interested in cooperating. Understood?”
Casey’s head inclined in a nod and then returned to its original position, like two frozen images in a vid feed dropping frames. “Good,” Adda said. “So, tell me: What do you want?”
CHAPTER 28 Days until launch: 9
Usually Iridian tolerated short stints in null-g by distracting herself from its effects, but today she’d give a hell of a lot to rest in a chair for a few breaths. Adda had been in her workspace for about a minute when the damned Mayhem started living up to its name. First, the fans stopped. While everybody’s heart rates were still spiking from that, the sunsim and windows went out. Nothing’s darker than the inside of a dead ship in the cold and the black. None of her crew were drunk enough to take that calmly.
Gavran had unstrapped to go to the bridge, and he got the enviro systems back on. Then he’d barreled into the main cabin yelling in Kuiper cant, heading for Adda’s residential cabin. Iridian had to get rough to stop him before he reached it. This time she was careful to keep away from his head. He’d been adamant about opening that door, though. She and Rio would have bruises for a week, if they lived that long.
Eventually Gavran had settled down enough to speak spacefarer English. “She infected Mayhem with that unsupervised dreck of an AI,” he snarled. “On purpose, she let Casey into my ship. I told her not to, but she did it anyway!”
“The enviro goes a little off and that’s the conclusion you jump to?” Iridian didn’t know enough about how AI copilots managed enviro to know whether the issues could’ve been a sign that Casey had damaged the copilot. The fact that they were all still breathing was encouraging. In his current state, interrupting Adda to let Gavran ask her directly wasn’t an option. “She sure as hell wouldn’t do it on purpose!”
“Hey, she’s always worked really hard to keep strange AIs away from the Mayhem,” Pel said. Iridian was still holding Gavran back, because she didn’t trust him not to go for the door again. She raised an eyebrow at Pel, hoping he knew what he was doing for a change. “That doesn’t sound like something she’d let happen by accident, let alone do it on purpose. Just go back and take another look at the bridge console, okay?”
Gavran’s pseudo-organic leg twisted around Iridian, and she had to let go of him to keep from getting smashed into a wall. “I’m going, I’m going.” Gavran’s voice descended in pitch with each word. “But if I find that she’s really contaminated Mayhem with an awakened AI, I’m coming back to make her clear Casey out of my ship.” Iridian let him close the bridge door before she, Wiley, and Rio laughed nervously and collected the floating bags of stuff from Sunan’s Landing. The more Iridian drank of it, the less it tasted like grapes were involved in its creation.
He might come back shooting the nannite gunk he loaded his sidearm with. It’d chewed through Captain Sloane’s armor in seconds. Iridian’s and Wiley’s cheap suits wouldn’t stand a chance. The ZV Group gear Rio wore might survive long enough to keep him from breaking Adda’s concentration and giving Casey an opportunity to do something awful while she was distracted.
“Do you think they”—Pel nodded toward the window, which once again displayed the local star field and the awakened AIs’ ships—“did something to his head?”
“Might have done something through his neural implant,” Iridian said. “He didn’t get the modding done that Adda did, remember? He didn’t want our modder messing with it.” Even if he did, Kanti would’ve needed the firmware source from Gavran’s implant to help. Apparently it didn’t have much in common with Adda’s.
Wiley took a swig from one of the bags of wine. “Makes me miss the ISVs.”
“Tell me about it,” said Iridian. Wiley passed her the bag and Iridian took a slug of her own. The infantry shield vehicles she and Wiley had operated in the war were such simple machines that they didn’t require an AI to run them. “ISVs never talked back.”
* * *
Iridian kept checking the time, because she kept forgetting it. The Sunan’s Landing wine was unreasonably strong. Much as she’d wanted to drink until she couldn’t worry about what Adda was doing anymore, she and Rio both stopped. Together they could hold the bridge door shut, at least until Gavran decided that interrupting Adda was worth shooting through it. Wiley and Pel kept drinking until tears coalesced in a sheen over Wiley’s eyes and cheeks. Pel, in his effort to offer a comforting touch, sent them both careening across the Mayhem’s cabin in opposite directions. Two hours had passed with no further interruption from Gavran, so he must’ve found proof that Adda hadn’t let Casey “infect” his ship.
The residential cabin door clicked and slid up into the overhead, and Adda floated in the doorway, dazed and ecstatic, with her pupils blown wide from the sharpsheets. Iridian grabbed a bulkhead handhold, in case she had to move in a hurry. Adda had gone into that room calm and determined. Dramatic mood changes after talking to an AI could be a sign of influence.
&nb
sp; “Iri, come here,” Adda said. “I want to . . . Casey showed me where it wants to build its new home, and you have to see it.”
Iridian shuddered. Just before Adda had attacked her under Casey’s influence, she’d said something similar. But back then she’d had understandable reasons to be angry at Iridian. “Sure.” Iridian glanced at Rio and Wiley, who nodded. If needed, they’d come to Iridian’s rescue.
Pel blinked one purple eye and one gold one at Adda. “How’s she supposed to see anything in your workspace, Sissy?”
“My comp will show the important parts. Come on!”
The stimulants in Adda’s sharpsheets usually kept her calm instead of winding her up. Now her eyes and her smile were as wide as they’d been when Iridian had told her I do. The wedding had been on Casey’s ship. They’d had a hell of a time since then. Iridian pushed off the wall to go to her, and thrust out of her head all the bad ways this demonstration might end. She trusted Adda. She didn’t really want to live in a universe where she couldn’t.
In the small cabin, Adda took another sharpsheet and maneuvered herself back into the mobile workspace generator, then passed her comp out to Iridian. It was still plugged into both Adda’s nasal jack and the workspace generator, so Iridian turned herself upside down in the confined space to keep the comp near the generator. Usually when Adda showed Iridian pieces of her workspace, she projected salient facts onto a bulkhead, or onto the generator itself when Iridian had room to crawl in with her. Putting it on the comp let the machines translate what Adda was experiencing into something that made sense to Iridian.
The comp presented what looked like a bad rendering of the solar system. “Oh, this isn’t ours, is it,” Iridian said. “It’s the one across the interstellar bridge.”
Gravity of a Distant Sun Page 36
