Ill Wind

by Tal Turing

  At one point, as they were ascending the wall of the valley, the computer highlighted an area in green. The officers responded with a flurry of activity. She looked over at her partner: a corper named Krystof.

  “What is that?” she asked, surprised by the worry in her own voice.

  “It's on the display,” he nodded toward a screen. “That is camera F10. See the status? It's on the list to replace.”

  She had seen the information but didn't realize what it meant. F10-NS. The NS meant 'no signal', it was completely dead. She could see the unit itself brought up on the view screen, a small, dark piece of brownish plastic that blended into the trunk of a tall tree. It was marked off their short list but they wouldn't replace it until later, after their survey was complete.

  Later, as they approached another portion of the valley rim, she saw another green-drawn rectangular area, it was positioned in mid-air. Cyn looked at the display, the AI listed it as F17-XX. Even as she started to ask her partner the meaning of the 'XX' code, Edwyrd was speaking to their collective AI.

  “Can someone visually confirm that camera F17 is missing?”

  “It should be located in a tree,” answered Krystof, “but I have a visual and the tree isn't there, I can't tell if it blew over or what til you move closer.”

  The hugger ascended and approached. There was a gorge cut into this side of the valley and they rose with the terrain until they found what they were looking for. At the rim of the valley was a stump marking the place where a tree used to be. And the face of the stump was smooth. Whatever had severed the tree from the stump had used a cutting tool and the tree itself was nowhere to be found.

  Cynnamon, protected by a weather suit and matching helmet, slowly descended the large gradient of the valley wall, allowing the metal cord, her lifeline, to slide through her harness as she did so. Able to see the stump, she now locked the cord and worker her way over to it. She stared at the rings of wood, it was a clean cut.

  Keeping a wide stance against the hill, she turned to inspect the slope below. She saw rocky soil and then a graveyard of foliage and debris. Perhaps the tree had just been cut and it had simply slid down the hill side.

  “Find that camera,” the unsettling hiss entered her helmet. The officers had donned their armor which strangely distorted their voices. She could no longer identify who was who, all of their voices sounded like they had changed into snake creatures.

  She took off the brake and started to lower herself down. The howling wind abated as she entered the reservoir of debris. It was then that she thought of escape for the first time. She could release the line and scurry into the debris and make her way across the valley. Assuming they did not find her. Assuming the storm did not kill her. It was only a thought.

  After a while, she located a thick, long trunk, its end cut cleanly. She magnified the view so that the rest could see as she followed the tree trunk to its canopy and there, on one side, was the missing camera.

  “Return with itsssss”, someone hissed again.

  She nodded, stowed the unit and started to work her way back up the hill. The roar of the wind returned as she made her way up. She paused, to rest, and took a look up along the slope. There was a black figure at the top, near the location where her line was anchored. It did not move even as she stared at it. She continued.

  A lone, armor-covered ranger waited for her as she approached the rim of the hill. The figure was tall and broad, the ebony, armored scales that covered it were jagged, sharp and crystalline. Not a surface you would ever want to touch. The size of the thing put her in mind of Stym, but they had left him behind.

  The creature said nothing but simply pointed further up the hill. They walked and found that the ridge in the hill continued down the other side, into the next valley. It stopped her and gestured toward a section in the soil, tracks, the long, heavy marks of a ground tank.

  Ssssss They removed the tree to allow their machine to entersssss.

  She nodded but said nothing else as they walked to join the others. The other two assets were now armed and she spoke with them.

  “Raiders,” one explained, his eyes bright white, “and their vehicle seems heavy, perhaps laden with equipment or soldiers. It is moving in a bad direction, toward New Berlyn. So we have to catch them and stop them.”

  The hospie pointed into the large hole cut into the thicket of tangled tree limbs and vines that extended down and into the valley.

  “Drones can't fly there and the space is too small for the hugger...” Overwhelmed, the man looked away and the other spoke.

  “They seem to be cutting their way through the ravine, clearing the way for their vehicle as they go. So...we should be able to catch them quickly.”

  It is forbidden for us to leave our own valley. Our only death penalty. Thus it is so for those who enter. However, New Berlyn will exempt women...if they can be captured. But all othersssssss...

  If you can't handle the requirement. You can return to the hugger and accept a commission penalty.

  There was a pause and the three assets looked at each other. Cyn shook her head, she was not willing to accept what might amount to even another month equivalent in her debt.

  The raspy voice entered their helmets from virtual space and she almost gasped as the hugger vehicle lifted off, flickered and seemed to disappear in the twilight. Leaving them alone.

  “They have armor but they leave us to do this!” complained one of the hospies.

  Cyn brought up her weapon and let her AI attach to it. She saw that the targeting had gone green, it was enabled.

  “You should have taken the penalty,” she said simply as she turned and walked into the dark thicket.

  The three assets crept through the dark, torn, jungle of destroyed trees, their weapons activated and their AI scanning the path ahead. The two hospies, wary of breaking branches and making noise, started to fall behind. Cyn followed a path of damp, dark soil, it had less obstacles but took her further afield and away from the others.

  The AI found a significant, varying, heat source ahead, perhaps a small fire. Now Cyn crept carefully, low to the ground. Beyond the fire, she saw the outline of a building or perhaps a vehicle. And there were some additional heat sources. It looked like people, one curled up near a tree, the other two prone, perhaps sleeping.

  It was then that Cyn heard a twig snap, it pierced the darkness and through her thoughts and concentration, freezing her motion. It came from one of the other assets.

  Then, through her AI, she saw it happen. The two sleeping forms flew into action, low, like missiles, moving so quickly, they could not be human. They were closing quickly on the two hospies. She heard one of them curse.

  Cyn switched her weapon to auto-fire even as she swung her arm toward the motion, the cross hair sliding quickly to catch one of the racing objects and her AI did the rest. She heard the muffled shots and heard the scream of a beast in response. Dogs? Wolves?

  She kept her eyes forward even as her arm moved, searching for a second shot. But now the things had reached the assets and their green mixed with the red of her targets and the AI was not finding a clear shot.

  Suddenly there was a loud hiss from ahead and the fire dissolved into a dark cloud of smoke and steam. She heard more shots from the assets and a loud squeal.

  The smoke from the doused fire drifted quickly toward her, covering her position, but baffling her infrared readings.

  A flood light snapped on from ahead, its beam illuminating the location where the assets had stood their ground; it was a strong light and if it had been pointing in her direction, it might have revealed her. She lowered her body within inches of the ground as she swung her weapon forward.

  In her AI, the flood light looked like a pink, slowly gyrating, sun as the beam searched for her partners. As her AI found the light source, the targeting cross hairs sliding over it, the AI took two more shots. The flood light dropped and extinguished amid a muffled scream. Now her AI found a new, dimme
r target; two more shots and that something crumpled to the ground.

  Her intuition was to turn her attention back to the assets and toward anything which might be behind her.

  You have backup. Hold position. Shoot as needed. An awful voice insisted, startling her.

  She lowered her body as she kept her weapon arm trained ahead. She heard a movement from her rear, something pushing through the foliage, unconcerned about the noise it made. It was growing closer. She kept her position. There was a harsh rushing of air, and whatever it was grunted and was silenced.

  Now Cyn now could hear shouts, apparently the rangers had circled around to the front. She heard pops of weapon-fire. A young man emerged from the darkness. He was more like a boy, his chest bare, his hair long and curly, his body so slender she could see his ribs.

  Cynnamon tried to take a mental picture of his face, as he ran toward her position, before she fired two shots and he dropped to the ground, his weapon clattered in her direction. Time seemed to stop and she was tempted to think about what she had just done, but she pushed that back down. There would be time later, entire nights perhaps.

  Another young man crawled from beneath the strange vehicle, his face also covered with hair. He beckoned to another person, straightened his back and eyed his fallen comrade's body and weapon. He took a single step toward it when Cyn whistled.

  The man looked up and saw her. She shook her head, her cross-hair unwavering on his chest. He raised his arms slowly. Another person crawled out from beneath the vehicle, It was a woman wearing a long, dark coat. She looked questioningly at the man.

  They exchanged glances and the man's eyes led the woman toward Cyn's position. The woman started to look in Cyn's direction and then dropped, reaching for the fallen weapon.

  Even as the woman started to move, two more shots felled her companion and the woman froze, the cross-hairs now on her.

  It was another two minutes before two black rangers appeared.

  Stand down.

  For once, Cyn was relieved to hear the strange, garbled voice in her helmet. She disabled her weapon and stood up, ignoring the complaints from her muscles. As she watched, bright lights illuminated the area and more black armored security officers appeared, setting about their tasks.

  Now that she could see it, the vehicle appeared to be a strange, metal building on top of an old tank chassis.

  The woman was bound and secured with a shock tether while the bodies were grouped together. Cyn flinched when each received a precautionary final shot.

  The larger trailer portion of the vehicle was opened. To Cyn's surprise, there were more humans inside. She counted at least ten women, all much younger than the one she had captured, probably in their mid-teens if even that.

  Cyn turned away when a guard approached with a weapon. But she heard nothing, not even a scream. When she looked back again the females were simply bound at the wrist and led back to the hugger along with the captive.

  “What should I do?” she asked one of the few guards who stood nearby.

  The less the better. Already you'll regret you were even here.

  In the next half-hour, the vehicle was searched, stripped and destroyed. The bodies of the dead were also searched and she expected them to be buried. They were, but only after the surgical saws opened them up. Cyn watched as much as she could and then turned away. When she saw a guard leave a shovel unattended, she picked it up and helped with the burials.

  On the way back to New Berlyn, she caught the woman in the long coat looking at her, hatred on her face and in her eyes. Perhaps her companion had been a friend, a brother or even a lover. Cyn shrugged, and looked away. The woman had intentionally taken a chance with the man, although he might have died in any case. Cyn was sure that she would remember those she killed much longer than this woman ever would. And the whine of the surgical saws.

  The Night Visitor

  Cynnamon was exhausted, barely taking the time to check her room before locking the door, crawling into her bedchamber and falling asleep. She did not even power down her AI but simply left it on the desk.

  It was in the dead of night when her eyes fluttered, her temple buzzing. Her AI was reaching out to her implants, telling her that they had received information.

  The space outside her bed chamber was black, almost too black she thought as she surveyed the room with her eyes, trying to distinguish familiar shapes in the darkness, the outline of the door, the columns of the chamber, the chair, but it didn't match. There was something else, a black splotch where her mind did not expect it, something large in front of her bedchamber.

  Wake

  The thing hissed impatiently, like a deadly gas leaking insistently into a room or a venomous snake pushed too far. The eerie voice had a familiar warble within its voice, like a race of creatures from a nightmare. Like the rangers from earlier that day.

  Cyn did not react, remaining inert as she tried to make sense of what was happening. Had she dreamed it, a phantasm which reached beyond the borders of sleep? The large form melted forward, closing and she could feel the sheet slide off her body as if it had a will of its own.

  I said wake up!

  An impossibly cold and hard hand grasped her leg, closing on it like a vice, pulling her. Cyn's eyes transitioned from slits to wide, frantically opened as she was pulled out of the chamber, her ankle lifted high and her body dropping to the cold floor.

  She looked up at the black form which towered over her. How did it get here? Through the door? How? And why? She did not speak or protest, whatever it was, whoever it was, it had its own intentions and she was already relieved it had not crawled into the chamber with her.

  Rules have reasons, asset whore! To disobey them is to invite me back!

  It sneered as a bright, white beam of light snapped on, emanating from its face and blinding her. Her eyes snapped closed even as it held her bare ankle. Its clutch did more than hold, it hurt, as if its hard skin was made of glass crystals and cold enough to burn.

  It lifted her suddenly, even higher into the air, and she gasped in surprise as her head cracked the ground. She saw stars but her ears heard it, the sound of small motors within the entity's bulk, aiding it. This was no creature from beyond, it was a human wearing a stibnite suit. But she still couldn't understand who it was or why...

  Cyn tried to resist its grasp but doing so felt like needles being pressed into her skin and the muscle underneath. She cried out as she reversed her effort, now pushing the floor with her hands to try to ease the pressure on her wounded ankle.

  Do what the hell you are told and nothing else. If I return, I will rip you open from the inside!

  In her mind, she could picture the blood now pouring from her ankle, the muscles shredding. She cried out and almost as soon as she did, it dropped her and the light flared. She curled into a ball as her shoulder slammed into the hard floor, tears sparkling in the white light. She pulled her limbs in tightly, to keep it from having anything to grab.

  The light cut out, the door opened and closed again.

  She reached for her poor ankle and felt blood, slick around the ankle. What the hell had just happened? Right in her room, in Transom House?

  She rose and stumbled to the door, locking it. How had it gotten in? She was certain her door was privacy-locked. She turned on a light and wiped the blood from her ankle, the wound was not as severe as it had felt, but it looked awful, the skin had been stripped in a band around her ankle, drops of blood oozing from beneath.

  Her mind raced over the encounter, trying to make sense of it. Those words. It had said 'Rules have reasons' and her mind sifted through her recent days in New Berlyn. She had heard that phrase before. Then she remembered, on her first day, Edwyrd Harilla had said exactly the same thing to her.

  But what really chilled her blood was its parting words, what it promised to do to her, when it returned.

  But it had said 'if I return'. That was a threat and Cyn knew that threatening violence and viole
nce were very different things with very different purposes.

  Fourth Techview Interlude

  James

  James waited in queue at the Daneel Tech Service station. His immediate handler, his boss, had given him a strange look when informed that James' AI unit had failed yet again. In truth, it had taken all night to get the AI glasses to stop working, he had finally used an electromagnetic.

  Finally he was directed to cubicle #5. A Daneel representative met with him, a happy, congenial, elderly face projected on the face plate.

  “I don't know what is going on but this is the third time the damn thing has failed,” James feigned exasperation. But what he heard next was not the usual polite technician response.

  “Don't be ridiculous James, these devices do not just break, what did you do, sit on it?”

  James smiled.

  “Do I know you? Of course I did not sit on it. But I go to the gym and I was lifting...”

  “You never workout with your AI anywhere near you,” the woman smiled as she inspected the unit.

  “How do...” James began.

  “James D3T12, you know who I am.”

  “Nope, I don't recognize the voice.”

  “How about now?”

  The wizened, wrinkled face projected on the face plate evaporated to be replaced with that of a serious, young man with black hair, arched eyebrows and smooth skin.

  “Trent? Is that you? They told us you went over, how's life buddy?”

  “Life?” The entity became motionless and the voice became less of Trent and more of Daneel. “Life is marvelous. And so much more than it was, so much more than you think. This is not my physical body, I am actually one floor above you, inspecting materials in a storage room. But, if I wanted, I could be in SkyTran Dome almost as easily and as quickly as I can say it. Life is great, now that you ask.”

  James made some polite conversation before, finally, asking the question that brought him there.