Radiate

by C. A. Higgins

“The Mallt-y-Nos had an ally named Julian Keys,” Ivan said, clear and loud. “Did you ever find out what happened to him?”

  Ivan felt the accuracy of his own guess, as if he had hit upon the frequency that was in resonance with the others’ bodies, and now they rang out like bells under the power of his voice.

  “How did you find him?” Ivan asked, and thinking of superstition and thinking of power, he smiled with faint and dire confidence at Arawn’s wary expression. “Dead, and his ships dead around him?”

  The woman holding Mattie’s arm hissed out her breath. Mattie miraculously kept silent, and in his silence kept himself safe. Ivan said, “That is how you found him, isn’t it? His whole fleet dead, and not a mark on them.”

  Tuatha was watching him the way she might watch a wild dog. Arawn’s expression was hard to read, but he was looking at Ivan, really looking at him, as if he were seeing Ivan for the first time and not what he imagined Ivan to be.

  “That ship will do the same thing to you and all your people,” Ivan said. “And it won’t cost it a minute’s effort or a second’s remorse. It will happen soon. That ship is coming. You won’t be able to make a mark on her.”

  “Why should I believe a Terran?” said Arawn.

  “That was the ship where Constance left me to die.”

  Murmurs, movement from the people surrounding them.

  Ivan said, “We can help you. We can change your ships so that that ghost ship can’t touch them. It doesn’t cost you anything if we’re wrong. But if we’re right, all your ships in orbit will be dead, and you’ll be marooned on this moon for the rest of your life.”

  “And if I let you into my ships’ computers, you can do whatever you like to them,” said Arawn. “Program them not to fly, corrupt them, destroy them yourselves.”

  “Send someone to watch us,” said Ivan. “What we’re doing isn’t complicated. We can teach your people how to do it.”

  From the fleeting expression on Arawn’s face, Ivan knew the truth: Arawn didn’t have any skilled technicians. Sure, his soldiers would know the basics of machinery; it wasn’t possible to live in the System’s world without having a basic comprehension of how their computers worked. But he had no one as skilled as Ivan and Mattie were.

  Constance had always valued fighters over intellectuals.

  Arawn said, “Both of you can do this?”

  “Yes,” said Ivan, “together—”

  But Arawn was shaking his head, a faint smile on his face. The look he turned on Ivan was triumphant. “Either of you can do this.”

  “No,” said Ivan, “not alone,” but Arawn was looking at Mattie now and reading in his expression what Ivan wasn’t admitting.

  “Separate them,” said Arawn, and Ivan found himself suddenly pulled away from Mattie, the nearness of him the worst kind of absence, when Arawn might—

  Mattie said, in a way that frightened Ivan more than a gun to his head ever could, “If you hurt him—”

  Arawn laughed. “Calm down, little brother. You’re the hostage. Danu,” he said, and the woman holding Mattie’s arm straightened to attention, “take the son of Milla Ivanov to my shuttle. Let’s find out if he can do what he promises.”

  FORWARD

  Mattie did not think there could be a better satisfaction in this world than getting his fingers around Arawn’s neck and feeling the bones of it snap beneath his grip. Maybe if he did, the heat that had been burning in his chest ever since the day he had faced Constance down over the expanse of her empty bar might burn out. Or maybe not—maybe that heat was the one strength he had left in Constance’s new and vicious world.

  He was brought behind Arawn into the old System building that the Conmacs had taken as a headquarters. Ivan had been taken away by a different group of guards to Arawn’s shuttle.

  Mattie watched the back of Arawn’s neck as he walked.

  “My people like Constance Harper,” Tuatha was saying, walking beside Arawn through the main antechamber toward the grand steps on the other end, two steps for his one. “They won’t like to hear—”

  “Explain to them that she was a traitor,” said Arawn, with a sort of genial confidence that Mattie hated immediately. “She betrayed her revolution, and she was willing to leave this moon to the System. They’ll understand that.”

  Tuatha blinked, her mouth ajar, but no words came out.

  Arawn stopped when they reached the step.

  “You can do that, can’t you?” he said to Tuatha, and clapped one hand on her arm.

  For so long that Mattie almost thought she might refuse, Tuatha did not reply. Then her gaze slid off Arawn and onto his guard of well-armed, well-trained soldiers, two of whom still had Mattie by the arms.

  “Yes,” Tuatha said.

  “Then do it,” said Arawn, as relaxed as a well-fed dog. “An ambassador from Anji Chandrasekhar will be here soon. I want to speak to him. When he arrives, send him to me. I’ll be in the war room.”

  “Yes,” Tuatha said, but she was saying it to the air; Arawn had already started to walk off. She met Mattie’s eyes as he passed; she looked away first.

  When they had reached the top of the steps and were headed down the long transverse hall toward the war room, Arawn said to Mattie, “How close is the System ship?”

  “Fuck you,” Mattie said.

  “I know that either you or Ivanov could do to my ship what I sent him to do. I only really need one of you.”

  Mattie imagined what the collapse of Arawn’s windpipe would feel like under his fingers.

  “How close,” Arawn Halley asked, “is the System ship?”

  If he had been Ivan, Mattie would have had a dozen lies ready and would have been able to pick the one that would best manipulate Arawn Halley. Because he was not Ivan, Mattie had only the truth.

  It took only a quick mental calculation: how many days lost on Europa, how far the ship must have been for that transmission, how fast the Ananke could travel.

  “Close,” he said. “Could be a week. Could be a few minutes. But she’ll be here soon, and when she gets here, she’s going to kill you.”

  “ ‘She’?” said Arawn. “Who is ‘she’? Is she the commander of this ship?”

  “That’s what you call a ship,” said Mattie. “Ships are ‘shes.’ ”

  They had arrived at the war room. Arawn pushed the door open and strode in, and Mattie’s captors followed. The war room did not look any different as a prisoner than it had as a free man. The map of Europa still glowed a gentle silver, the edges of the nearest cryovolcano warped with imperfections in the light.

  Mattie’s guards led him to one of the metal chairs and cuffed his hands to the armrests. Idiots, he thought, and winced as they cinched the metal bracelets too tight.

  Arawn said, “What do you know about this System ship?”

  “Not much,” said Mattie as the second cuff was tightened enough to dig into his skin. He subtly flexed his fingers to test the strength of the metal but not subtly enough—Arawn’s gaze flickered down to his hands knowingly. “I only know what it’s done before. It killed Julian and his people,” killed them seconds after Mattie had been talking to him, killed him, probably, because it had been looking for Mattie himself, “and when it gets here, it’ll do the same thing to you.”

  “Not if your friend can do what he says.”

  “He can do what he says,” Mattie said.

  “Then there’s nothing to worry about,” said Arawn. Mattie envisioned slamming his head forward so that his forehead struck Arawn’s chin and broke his teeth.

  But Arawn was too far away, and if Mattie got shot here, there would be no one to help Ivan—or his sister.

  “I told you about the System ship,” Mattie said. “Now tell me what happened to Constance.”

  “She wasn’t looking for you, you know.” Arawn sat himself on the edge of the table. The hologram flickered in distress when he intercepted it and faded out into static where it impacted the edge of his broad coat. “She
didn’t give either of you any thought at all.”

  “Where is my sister?”

  “Dead, soon. Milla Ivanov is dead, too.”

  Mattie’s hands clenched around the armrests of the chair. “Tell me what you did to my sister.”

  Arawn smiled humorlessly. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Your sister turned her back on this revolution: she was going to let the System live. I removed her before she could do any more harm, and I sent her to Anji Chandrasekhar. What happens to her next is Anji’s problem.”

  “She’s not at Saturn yet?”

  “I have no idea where she is.”

  “The ships you sent her away in,” said Mattie. “How large were they? Were they relativis—”

  “They were large ships,” Arawn admitted, which meant that the ships wouldn’t have relativistic drives, which meant that they probably hadn’t reached Saturn yet, which meant that Constance was still alive and Mattie still had time.

  Arawn said, “She’s dead, Mattie. But I know you’re a man of many talents. Loyalty. And you have the right spirit to stay alive in these times. You could find a place with me and mine.”

  Mattie said, “I will bite off your face and leave you to choke to death on your own tongue.”

  Arawn did not seem surprised. He straightened up and rose from his seat on the table. The hologram rippled back into place as he left, the glassy ice of Europa re-forming.

  “Keep him here,” he ordered his guards. “Wait for me. The ambassador will be here soon, and I’ll be back to meet him.”

  He left, swinging the reinforced door shut behind him and enclosing Mattie in the soundless gray room.

  With the guards watching, Mattie couldn’t even work to get himself out of the handcuffs. He gritted his teeth and tried not to do anything stupid.

  Hang on, Constance, he thought, and flexed his fingers against the numbness that threatened them. I’m going to get to you first.

  FORWARD

  The shuttle that had brought Arawn Halley down to Europa once had been System. Ivan wondered if there existed a single revolutionary ship that had not once been System.

  Now that the System was gone, Ivan thought, who would build any more ships? The solar system would fight itself until it marooned its people on their own dying moons.

  “This way,” said Danu. The shuttle had two levels; the lower level was a wide empty space for troops to gather for immediate disembarking onto the ground, and the upper level, Ivan knew, would be the more specialized rooms. The walls down here had been stripped down to bare metal. Ivan saw the places where System screens once had been welded to the walls, the better to show a constant display of orders and propaganda.

  There was an elevator in the back of the shuttle, but Danu ignored it, climbing up the nearest of the ladders that were set into the walls. Ivan followed her despite the way the climb pulled at his injured leg.

  For a moment, while the rest of Arawn’s people climbed up the ladder, it was just Ivan and Danu standing in the narrow dark hallway of the upper level. Ivan considered whether he could take her out.

  Danu stood with the squared hips of someone who knew how to rule a fight. Her skin had been weathered by a long Plutonian winter, and she had a gun and at least three different knives at her hip. She’d have him subdued in an embarrassingly short time.

  The other two guards joined them on the second level momentarily, and Ivan almost laughed. Three guards for a man who couldn’t take down even one.

  “Here,” said Danu, and opened a solid metal door, letting Ivan into the shuttle’s control room.

  The room was made of the same black metal as the rest of the ship, and lights and screens glittered from that black metal like stars in the sky. Two steps led up to a metal-mesh platform that let the crew walk over the mass of wiring and machinery that cluttered what should have been the floor. From the mesh platform, the computer interfaces could be reached: a main viewscreen that took up one slanted wall; other, smaller viewscreens that were mounted on the ceilings; keyboards and smaller displays that were set into the walls and counters. Directly beside the two metal-mesh steps, lofty and dark and hollow, was a holographic terminal.

  Danu followed Ivan up the mesh steps. The room was not too large; Ivan could cross it with six generous strides. Nor was it especially bright; aside from a few round lights beneath the mesh platform, lighting up the wires and machinery underneath, most of the light in the room came from the computer displays.

  “Well?” said Danu.

  “I have to see what I’m dealing with.” Ivan chose the main display as a starting point. Stools made of the same black metal as the rest of the ship had been welded to the mesh, and Ivan seated himself in front of the screen. The stool was warm not with body heat but with the heat of the machinery that had traveled in gentle vibrations through all the interconnected metal.

  The other two guards stood at the base of the metal-mesh steps in the little space between the steps and the outer door. Only Danu had come up onto the platform with him. Ivan said casually to her as he worked to get to know the ship he was now immersed in, “Your name’s Danu?”

  “Yes,” said Danu.

  “You’re from Pluto?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you followed Arawn?”

  “Six years.”

  “That’s not as long as I thought.”

  “Can you work and talk at the same time?”

  “I’m doing it right now,” Ivan said, and the shuttle opened itself to him the way Danu did not. Standard System military operating system. A pain to do—the System’s surveillance was never so deeply integrated in a machine than when the machine had to do with its own military—but doable for certain.

  He said to Danu, “I’m curious. Is Arawn going to kill me and Mattie after this, or is Mattie already dead?”

  “Arawn doesn’t waste useful lives.”

  “That’s very reassuring, Danu,” said Ivan, and watched for the faint flicker of her brown eyes that might speak of remorse.

  The last time he’d been here had been on the Ananke, trying to pull Althea Bastet’s pity from its shell of wariness. It was suddenly exhausting to keep working Danu. Ivan turned from her and her three knives and the gray streaking her long black hair and dived into the machine.

  After all, Ananke was coming.

  It was not Ananke who came next to disturb him, but Arawn.

  “You can go,” came Arawn’s voice from behind Ivan, and Ivan heard the other two guards leave. “Danu, stay.”

  The metal mesh rattled beneath Arawn’s feet as he took the two steps up to the platform. “How far along?”

  “This is a military ship; it’s riddled with System overrides,” Ivan said. “This will take me a little while.”

  “Your friend warned me that this ghost ship is nearly here.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in this ghost ship.”

  “I don’t. But I also believe in having every possible advantage.”

  It was Constance all over again, Ivan realized. If Ivan gave Arawn the advantages he needed, Arawn would destroy Ananke and Althea as well. If Ivan did not, Arawn would attack the Ananke anyway, and he and all his people would die.

  “Then don’t engage that ship when it arrives. It’s not interested in you. If you leave her alone, she might do the same.”

  “She,” said Arawn. “Again, ‘she.’ Mattie said that, too.” He bent down in front of Ivan so that they were eye to eye. “What do you and Mattie Gale know about this ship that you’re not telling me?”

  “Traditionally, ‘she’ is the correct address for a ship,” said Ivan, and Arawn snorted.

  “That’s what he said, too,” Arawn said, and straightened up. Ivan caught a brief glimpse of Danu watching the conversation with quick, expressionless eyes. No help from that corner.

  “I knew your mother,” Arawn remarked. He seated himself on the stool beside Ivan’s, resting his elbows on his knees. “Quite a woman, Milla Ivan
ov. I liked your mother. She didn’t like me much—it was hard to tell what your mother thought—but she respected me, and I respected her.”

  “How nice.”

  “We don’t need to be enemies, Ivan,” Arawn said, genial and honest. “You understand why I had to arrest you and Mattie when I saw you, but I don’t have anything against either of you. We can be friends.”

  “If I say I’m your friend, will you let me and Mattie go?”

  “Prove you’re my friend first and then we can talk.”

  “How can I prove that I’m your friend?”

  “Start by telling me what you know about this System ghost ship.”

  “I don’t like to trade in intangible things.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “A ship,” said Ivan. “After I finish with your shuttle, give me and Mattie a ship and let us leave.”

  “Done,” Arawn said. Behind him, Danu watched inscrutably.

  Ivan said, “The spiral ship isn’t System.”

  “Is it rebel?”

  Not as much a fool as he put on, then. “No. The ship belongs to herself and herself alone. Her name is Ananke, and she has no crew.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “The computer is alive.”

  “You’re as superstitious a fool as these damn Europans,” said Arawn. “The computer’s programmed somehow to fly on its own; is that it?”

  “If a program can think, and feel, and decide.”

  “A computer can’t do any of those things.”

  “Can’t it?” Ivan said. Around them, the lights of the machine they were burrowed inside blinked placidly. “You can simulate thought and emotion to a certain extent. Imagine you could simulate it perfectly. What would be the difference between a perfect simulation and a real living thing?”

  Arawn spread his hands in demonstration of his indifference.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ivan said. “Practically, what matters is how you react to it. However you’re going to handle this situation, understand this: that ship is alive, and conscious, and willing to defend herself.”

  For a moment Arawn studied him in silence. Then he said, without turning, “Danu, can you handle Mr. Ivanov on your own?”