Eden Burning

by Niall Teasdale

‘Nine…’ Arnold frowned and then got on with his summary. ‘We’re having more difficulty in the third section. More security. Some heavier weapons. However, we’re mostly finding scared people in habitation and some substantial destruction. There’s a… park or garden, or something. Hard to tell since it looks like someone more or less nuked the place. What isn’t flattened is burned, or burned and flattened.’

  ‘Fox likes thermobaric warheads,’ Kit supplied.

  ‘Ah. We’re working through, but it’s taking some time. We’re trying to get to the command centre in the core. We haven’t found Doctor Martins, Miss Hoarsen, or Captain Meridian yet.’

  ‘I suspect you’ll find Papa and Mariel in the computer core,’ Terri said. ‘And Fox… Follow the explosions.’

  Eden Station.

  Fox heard voices as she edged the door of the chapel open. One of them was loud enough to be fully audible over the announcement from the speakers, the other more of a mumble; someone was praying.

  ‘Damn it, Joshua. We’ve no time for this.’ Montcairn sounded angry, but also exasperated. ‘We need to leave! We need to leave now.’

  Keeping low, Fox slipped in and moved up behind one of the low-backed pews. Even the brief glance she gave the room as she went was enough to tell her what was going on. Joshua was on his knees at the front of the chapel, his hands raised in supplication. Montcairn was pacing up and down in front of him, shouting. Two guards with the ubiquitous shotguns stood ineffectual watch.

  ‘Okay then,’ Fox said inside her mind. ‘Guards go first, then we’ll see about the other two.’

  ‘I can’t see Joshua putting up much resistance,’ Kit replied. ‘I believe he’s suffering from a crisis of faith. The guards are wearing ballistic cloth. Your rifle should penetrate effectively.’

  ‘I’m aware.’ Fox shifted upward, checked her target, and fired off a burst before any of them were aware she was there. Metal needles punched through armour and the flesh beneath, and one of the guards was down in an instant. Her second burst was off, only one round hitting her target. The guard was visibly in pain, but he managed to fire back and bag himself a pew. Wood splinters flew and Fox’s second burst was all gold. The shotgun clattered to the ground, followed quickly by the body, and Fox set off down the centre aisle, dropping her rifle to hang on its sling while she reached for her pistol.

  Montcairn leaped on one of the fallen shotguns, swinging it up as Fox approached. ‘You’ll never–’

  Fox put a bullet through his right kneecap. ‘Shut up,’ she said over the scream which followed. He fell, but he was tougher than he looked; he remained conscious. Joshua just kept praying while Fox walked around, her pistol aimed at Montcairn, and Montcairn swung himself around to blast a hole in the ceiling with the shotgun. ‘Please. Stop,’ Fox said in a monotone, and then put a round through Montcairn’s shoulder. When the shriek of pain subsided, Montcairn began to giggle, but his ruined arm could no longer lift the shotgun.

  ‘Eli,’ Joshua wailed, ‘Eli lama sabachthani?’

  ‘It’s from the Bible,’ Kit supplied. ‘“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Approximately.’

  Fox turned to look at the man who thought himself the Son of God. His T-shirt had taken some damage in the garden: there were blackened patches where burning plant material must have caught him. His jeans were torn. Part of his beard had been singed and there was a reddened patch of skin up across his left cheek. His eyes shifted, turning to look up at her with the weirdest mixture of pain and awe in them.

  ‘If you want my opinion,’ Fox said, ‘he was never with you, but I shouldn’t imagine praying to a fucking huge picture of yourself is something He would find tolerable and, I don’t know, but letting this bastard’ – she flicked her pistol at Montcairn – ‘murder several thousand people in His name was probably not a good move.’

  ‘They had it coming!’ Montcairn slurred. ‘All of them. They’re all corrupt, evil. You’re nothing but–’

  Fox fired, the bullet whining off the deck an inch from Montcairn’s ear. ‘If you’re trying to get me angry so I’ll kill you, you’re not going to manage it. I’m so far past angry, I’m clear out the other side and in a different solar system. You’re not going to die. You’re going to live. You’re going to be tried for conspiracy to murder, and terrorism, and any other damn charge the world can come up with. Then you’ll be put in a box under the Mare Frigoris until you die of old age, you spineless, useless, pitiful excuse for a human being.’

  She turned her attention back to Joshua, who was now prostrate on the deck at her feet. ‘And you shouldn’t worry. They have a psychiatric wing at Cold Harbour.’

  Epilogue: To Begin Anew

  Jenner Research Station, The Moon, 29th August 2061.

  Fei was in a dress. Fei’s remote avatar with its short cap of near-white hair, pointed ears, pixyish features, and a body which was both lush and slim was wearing a blue dress with a ruffled skirt, along with blue, high-heeled sandals. The effect gave Fox pause since she was used to seeing the avatar in a powder-blue jumpsuit and this just made her appear more human.

  ‘I am so pleased that you have all returned safely,’ Fei said, her lips curling into a warm smile. ‘I am most especially pleased that our first meeting has not been delayed further, Mariel.’ She paused. ‘You don’t mind me calling you Mariel, do you? No one ever gives me all the names.’

  Mariel stepped forward and took Fei’s offered hand. ‘Mariel is fine. I’m pleased to meet you too, Fei. Though, truth be told, I’m just happy to be on solid ground again.’

  It had taken about eight hours to get everything sorted out on Eden Station, or sorted out enough for one of the cruisers to be available to transport the VIPs back to Luna City. There were transports heading out to L5 to handle transporting the Promised Land cultists back to the Moon; Captain Arnold had suggested that Fox might wish to assist in determining what to do with them and Fox had cited personal interest as a factor in not wishing to.

  So, the MarTech people had set off back to the Moon and Terri had been more than a little surprised when Jackson and Mariel had decided they could make do with one cabin between them. Surprised, but not at all displeased.

  Nineteen hours after leaving L5, they were all, finally, deep in the bowels of Jenner Research Station and, even if the gravity was not Earth-normal, it was better than the pitiful acceleration of a UNTPP cruiser.

  ‘I,’ Jackson said, ‘will wholeheartedly second that. Hello again, Fei.’

  ‘Hello, Jackson. It seems that every time you come to see me, there is some sort of incident involved.’

  ‘Hmm, you may have a point. We’re here now and we’ll take a couple of days going over your progress and letting you get to know Mariel.’

  The avatar’s lips curled again. ‘You mean, letting Mariel get to know me. Tomorrow. In case you were unaware, it is currently five forty-eight in the morning and I am sure you would all like some rest and time to acclimatise.’

  ‘Not really,’ Fox said, ‘but I’ll run a recharge and sleep cycle, get myself backed up, and then see where the mood takes me.’

  ‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’

  ~~~

  Fox sat in the lounge outside her rooms, cradling a glass of fairly good single malt and listening to Kit and Fei chattering. That was unfair: the two copies of Kit now in the facility had synced their memories so that gynoid-Kit could discuss all that had happened on Eden Station, and this was part of the learning process for the super-AI who had never been outside of a few floors of Jenner Research Station. Fei was discovering what religion could mean, not just what it was supposed to mean. Her view of what ‘human’ meant was broadening, though it could be said that she had a pretty broad definition anyway: she viewed Fox as human as well as being an infomorph, which was probably not a generally held belief. Fox was not really paying attention to what they were saying. Her mind, relieved of the need to find out why Jason had died, had nowhere to go but the past.


  ‘Fox, do you know?’

  Fox blinked and looked around at Kit. ‘Huh? Know what? Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ Fei asked.

  Fox gave her a half-smile. ‘It’s a saying. People say that when they weren’t paying attention because they were lost in their own thoughts.’

  ‘Possibly you should contemplate not using that one. Your mind could be somewhere else.’

  ‘I–’ Fox raised her eyebrows and then shrugged. ‘You make a valid point. What is it I’m supposed to pass an opinion on?’

  ‘Why people seem to enjoy creating end-of-the-world scenarios,’ Kit supplied.

  ‘No idea. A way of dealing with death? “Yes, we die, but one day we’ll rise again if we believe enough.” That seems to be a favourite. Maybe it’s just about death. Humans die, so why shouldn’t the world do the same? I honestly don’t know. I get creation myths, because everyone always wants to know how we came to be, but I don’t know why so many want to think it’s all going to end. Usually after a fairly short period of time too. Well, humans aren’t very good at imagining really long periods of time, so I guess that works. Anything over a few hundred generations tends to be beyond imagination. Unless you’re Mayan.’

  ‘They did have a very extended mechanism for handling dates,’ Kit agreed thoughtfully. ‘However, that doesn’t really help explain this to Fei.’

  Fox gave another shrug. ‘Maybe… People never seem to be happy with what they have. I mean, a lot of people are like that. Religious people seem to think that life is… something to be endured. You get sent here to prove you’re good enough to go somewhere nice when you die. When you die, if you’ve done the right things, you go somewhere better. I guess that’s a pretty big draw if you live in some fleapit where your job is breaking your back ploughing a field, probably so someone else can make money. Probably pretty easy to believe death will make things better if that’s your life.’

  ‘But you don’t believe that?’ Fei asked. ‘You don’t believe there is somewhere better after death?’

  Fox sighed. ‘It would be nice to.’ She stopped as Terri’s door opened and Terri stumbled through it, wearing a short, silky wrap which was badly tied in place and rubbing at tired eyes. ‘Can’t sleep?’

  ‘Been drifting in and out for hours. My rhythm’s totally off with grabbing naps when I can and… Well, with worrying. Not worrying doesn’t really get you back in sync just like that.’

  Fei fixed her creator with a stare. ‘When Jackson, Mariel, and Fox return to Earth, you will go with them.’ Terri opened her mouth, almost certainly planning to object. ‘Kit will be here to continue working with me. I’m not saying you should not come back, but you should take time to be with your family and your friends.’

  ‘She’s right, Terri,’ Fox said, before Terri could get a word in. ‘You’re young and you think you have time and there’s always another tomorrow. Then there isn’t.’

  Flopping onto a chair, Terri looked between them. She shrugged. ‘Okay. I could use a break. Yeah.’

  Fei sat up straight and positively beamed. ‘Excellent.’ She turned to Kit. ‘And while she’s away, we can start work on our battle plans.’

  Kit rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll go get the memory-zapper thing…’

  ~~~

  Another seat, but this one was in the lounge of the suite Jackson and Mariel were sharing. Terri had expressed slight amusement at that; all that time not being together and suddenly they did not want to be apart.

  ‘You know she’s trying really hard not to think about what you might be doing in there, right?’ Fox asked, nodding toward the bedroom door.

  ‘Well, we haven’t–’ Mariel began.

  ‘We’ve not actually–’ Jackson said.

  Fox giggled.

  ‘It’s been a while,’ Jackson went on, ‘and there’s no immediate rush. And, frankly, I’d rather relight my ardour in normal gravity.’

  ‘Huh, well, normally I’d say it’s an interesting experience in the lowered gravity, but given your stomach, you might be right. Doesn’t mean I can’t tease Terri about it though. Fei’s basically ordered her to go back to Earth with us. Take a break. Be with family. That kind of thing.’

  ‘She’s a very perceptive woman, our Fei.’

  ‘Wise beyond her months?’ Mariel suggested.

  ‘I think,’ Fox said, pausing to work through the thought. ‘I think Fei has a very strong perception of family. In the broad sense. Like I’m sort of part of Jackson’s family and Kit’s part of mine. Fei is restricted in the people she meets and talks to, and she’s, um, gregarious. I think she’s keen to learn about… about what’s outside her tank. The limits we put on her… She understands that we have to. I really believe she understands that, but she wishes they weren’t needed, and I think knowing about them has helped her understand, well, loneliness.’ Giving a shrug, Fox shifted in her seat and went on. ‘Anyway, she’s persuaded Terri to head back with us for a while, but I wanted to talk about something else. Um… I don’t think I can keep doing this.’

  Jackson’s face paled, but his voice was steady when he spoke. ‘I think you’ll need to be more specific.’

  ‘The job. CIO of Palladium.’

  Both Jackson and Mariel relaxed visibly. ‘Sooner than expected,’ Mariel said, ‘but not something we didn’t expect.’

  Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I that predictable?’

  ‘On this? Yes.’

  ‘I shanghaied you into the job, Fox,’ Jackson said. ‘I promised you that it would take a while before you had people you needed to manage.’

  ‘And then we got hit with the two policing resolutions,’ Mariel continued. ‘We’ve been running to keep up and, by January, I expect you’ll have a huge contingent of detectives under you to handle the metro regions. Our projections suggest that even those areas which may go with Wayden for general policing don’t believe they can provide adequate investigative coverage. Even after what happened with the previous round of contracts, Wayden are vague about that aspect of policing, and we both know it will be more important in the metros.’ She sighed. ‘We were considering a sweepstake on the first six months of next year for your resignation, but that’s out of the window, I suppose.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Fox replied, though she was smirking. ‘I thought I could continue in the position until the end of December. Get everything in place and hand over to my successor. Maybe stay on a little longer. I don’t remember what the contract says about–’

  ‘The thing is,’ Jackson said, ‘we’ve obviously considered this and we don’t want to lose you. We’ve discussed a number of possibilities, uh, with Garth.’

  ‘We were having some trouble working it all out,’ Mariel went on. ‘Mostly the details, really, and finding someone to take on the CIO role in your place. That is not going to be easy. Uh, then your ideas on handling the national security requirements came up and it all fell into place. Well, except for your replacement.’

  ‘Go on…’ Fox said, brow furrowed.

  ‘We need a tactical response unit. Well, we need several, but terrorist incidents don’t happen every other Thursday. We need someone up at the top of it who understands how to work with the NAPA and UNTPP liaisons, and can investigate a scene with terrorism in mind. It would be a full-time position, but it wouldn’t be something that’s needed all the time, freeing that person up to be used in other investigations. We thought you could do that, and support Helen as she heads up the general investigations. Though we’re not sure Helen has the right skill set for the board…’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Fox said, ‘but you put me on it. But… What we really need up there is someone who understands the jobs the detectives do, but has good administrative skills.’

  Jackson’s lips quirked: he was not considered a genius for nothing. ‘It would help if that individual had time on the job. Perhaps assisting a detective. Good data-handling skills would be useful. If she could also be in nine places at
once, that would be–’

  Kit appeared beside them, hands on her hips and a frown on her face. ‘Are you absolutely insane?! I can’t be on the board of–’

  ‘Why not?’ Mariel asked.

  ‘Well, I’m an AI, not–’

  ‘And you’ll, soon enough, have all the rights of a human. Certainly sufficient to hold an executive position on a board and, I’ll add, I don’t see what being an AI has to do with it anyway. A suitable infomorph, perhaps with corporate ownership, would be acceptable in such a position now. There’s certainly no legal reason why it couldn’t be done. Aside from what amounts to racism.’

  ‘There are AIs in management positions within the company already,’ Jackson said. ‘It’s not uncommon in Europe and there are some in Japan.’

  ‘You’ve your gynoid for personal appearances,’ Fox said, ‘and you can have a copy handling the work routinely. Maybe the company can provide you with processors in tower three and Chicago so you can be where you need to be when you’re needed. You’re a way better administrator than I am, but you’ve been my aide for long enough to know what’s needed and you can carry on learning because you can be in nine places at once. You’ll still have me and Helen to advise… You are perfect for the job, Kit. Suck it up.’

  ‘I think we should work through some details,’ Kit said. She looked about half-convinced, and also like she had just been shanghaied. Well, Fox knew exactly what that was like.

  Detroit–Chicago Metro, 5th September.

  Commuting as an infomorph definitely had advantages over doing it as a human, or even as a cyberframe. Fox and Kit had simply had to transfer to one of the huge servers in the MarTech tower in Chicago, and they had direct access to the viron housing Palladium’s virtual boardroom. Of course, everyone else was there via telepresence, but as far as Fox was concerned, she was actually sitting at the table. This was her world now, as much as the real one she interacted with through her frames.

  Today, Helen was joining the usual members of the Palladium board and not everyone there knew why. They would get to that, but there were other matters to handle first.