Selling Out

by Justina Robson

  “Whaddya gonna doo?” Thingamajig asked with abominable enthusiasm, looking all around them for something that he, perhaps, could get stuck into vandalising.

  Lila moved to one of the interface access points, opened the cover, and pulled out the relevant cables. She plugged them into her arm where the technicians usually applied their much smaller portable units to her and continued her search for the trojan while she reset the airlock system to 111b rules, shutting everyone else out.

  By this time there were various other people attempting to figure out what was going on and taking moves to prevent her damaging the main setup. They locked her out of personnel files, spy data, and all secure processes important to their main operations but she was only interested in certain parts of her own programming. Thanks to 111b she was temporarily allowed to isolate herself by her own command—she guessed it made sense that she ought to be able to if she were being interfered with and was a danger to others. But it went both ways. If she were being ridden by a programmer it would be the ideal opportunity to break into the entire network. Nothing was perfect. She stared for a second at the 111b rulings and saw, underneath it, some special addenda which stood out with the oddity of their statement:

  Agent Black Systems Exception—this unit is considered secure to all outside systems . . .

  There followed a great long swathe of information she didn’t understand which referred to high-security documents she was not allowed to access. Her AI mind summarised it for her into a single conclusion that stopped everything she was doing except the AI’s regimented search for the trojan command.

  The security people did not regard her as a hackable item, due to the fact that the systems which had been used to create her were of a type not available to any known technology-competent race. There was mention of a thing called the Rosetta Artifact and the fact that her machineries were of a different order to the rest.

  She was absorbing this when her AI abruptly halted the trojan hunt. All interface attempts went through this object, or program—the Rosetta Artifact. The machine she still held in her hand, and the others which were really only simple interfaces, used a single programmed password to initiate a command switch from her to themselves. Cracking an unknown password of unknown dimensions would take longer than her reactor would last. It was impossible. For a moment she sagged literally with the weight of failure.

  Meanwhile, as she had been involved in this brief minute of study, the imp had walked down her arm and was amusing itself with the wiring, tying knots of various sorts in the unused cables. “Mm,” it said as it felt her spirits sink. “At least you tried though, eh? Better than sitting there listening to all that guff and waiting for them lot to try and make a decision. Suppose there’s nothing to be done. You didn’t think they’d let you get away did you?”

  She had already gone through several scenarios and a host of searches, looking for the physical location of the Artifact. It was not listed anywhere.

  With a jerk she tore the cable inputs out of her arm and sat down on the floor. The determination that had driven her here, certain direct contact would make a difference, certain she could do something, was gone. The only possible action she could think of was to find the Artifact. Even then she might be unable to do any more than hold it and know it was the immovable object in her way to freedom.

  The signal for an incoming call flashed on in her vision. She knew who it would be suddenly without needing to look, and answered silently.

  “Lila?” Dr. Williams voice was gentle and concerned. “I suppose you’ve found out now, about yourself and the codes. I’ll be waiting, when you’re ready to talk.”

  Lila cut the line and rescinded all her commands, letting the doors open.

  The imp was murmuring to itself, “. . . rabbit goes over and down through the hole, then around the tree root . . .” as it tied a particularly complicated hitch.

  “There’s no way back,” she said to the air. Tath sighed.

  “Back to where?” the imp asked, tugging to test the strength of its work.

  Lila got to her feet, feeling another twinge in her hip. “Let’s go,” she said and waited for the tiny creature to walk its way back to her shoulder.

  The imp moved slowly and pouted its lower lip, “Don’t you resent me no more? Time was you’d just have left without me.”

  Lila looked at the ugly thing for a second. It sat uncertainly on the ruined shoulder of her suit like a tiny god. “You’re just another one like me,” she said and passed through the airlock silently on her walk back to the exam room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “...Crossworld group of uniquely powerful allies?”Teazle was ... saying to Zal with incredulity. “What is this, a comedy?”

  Zal shrugged and made a so-sue-me face. “The woman was so annoying. I couldn’t help myself.”

  They turned around as Lila came back and everyone looked at her with a variety of concern, expectation, and curiosity.

  “Are you all right?” Zal murmured.

  “No,” she said. “I wonder if you all would mind moving to another room so that Dr. Williams and I can talk alone.” She glanced quickly at Zal and Max to see if this request had upset them, but if it had neither of them were showing it. Malachi spoke in warm tones, ushering everyone competently away, diverting them with suggestions of drinks and untangling the dogs’ leads from the chair legs. At last Lila and the doctor were left together in the cool, clinical light.

  “That was quite a coup,” Lila said.

  “A necessary one,” Williams replied. “Cara has become too nervous to be effective. And who is this?” she indicated Thingamajig and looked at him with interest.

  “This is what you get in Demonia when you go to Hell,” Lila informed her, knowing that Thingamajig was in one of her reports and she didn’t need to go into excessive details. Williams was simply making pleasantries of a kind to pave the way to other things.

  “I’m a Lord of the Infernal temporarily inconvenienced by a curse: overcome by your plight and beauty I have become your companion in adventure and adversity and analysis,” Thingamajig corrected her haughtily. “I’m as good as that elf or that faery any day of the week.”

  Inside Lila’s chest Tath was laughing but his amusement didn’t touch Lila’s personal core of sadness. She shared a frank meeting of eyes with the doctor.

  “I don’t like the world I’m in,” she said. “I don’t like what happens in it. I don’t like the agency for lying. I don’t like myself for believing in the best all the time when I should have been paying attention to what was really true.”

  “You like Zal,” the doctor countered with her trademark mild tone. “And Malachi. You have your sister. You seem to have collected a couple of demon admirers. That’s more than most people can say.”

  “Yeah but this girl here used to believe in things,” the imp said with great feeling. “Like truth and justice, and adventure being a nice thing, and heroism and salvation and a whole bunch o’ other candy-sweet nonsense that you people like to fill your heads with morning, noon, and night. So what you’re offering her is a couple of sensational lovers, some friends, and a relative in exchange for the universe. I hear a lot about elves in the bedroom department and we all know demons are worth the cover charge but still you haveta consider what that weighs up to when it’s matched with your great and powerful motivating abstractions like goodness and purity and rightness and the work ethic and the notion of the world being a good place to live in which is continually moving towards a state of bland but acceptable pleasantness. The faeries sure did a number on this place and no mistake.”

  Williams regarded the imp for a moment. “I see that my services in the psychological department are under threat here. Are all imps this way?”

  “Few of them with my intellect or hidden arcane powers of insight, ma’am,” Thingamajig said modestly.

  “I don’t like being reduced to a two-minute magazine piece either,” Lila added. “Altho
ugh you’re right.” She twisted her head around to look at the imp. “Get lost again. I have something to talk about you’re not allowed to hear.”

  “Just because you ask so nicely,” the imp said and bounced off her shoulder, immensely pleased with itself. Somehow it flattened like a shadow and was able to slide between the door and the frame in order to get out.

  Williams watched it go and then looked up at Lila. “Change your mind about Alfheim?”

  “Everything about everything in these cases is wrong,” Lila said. “Including me. What I did was wrong, but I had to do it. I never thought I’d be the kind of person to be in this position. I feel cheated, like someone should have told me how it is and I should’ve had some box to tick Yes or No. You should have told me about the real reasons I was made. You should have told me about the Artifact. Delaware should have admitted she wanted to use my parents as a good excuse to find out about the necromancers. I should have paid more attention to the real differences between my world and the demons’ so I didn’t end up starting more wars than I can handle. I should have objected right from the start. But none of those things happened. And I hate that. I resent it. I want everything to be otherwise. I want to be right. I want to be good. I want to be blameless. I want to be able to fix things. I want to be free. I want to be normal. I’m not any of that. And there’s something wrong with me. My arms and legs hurt at the joins. Zal’s wife—I didn’t even know he had one—is dead because of me. I don’t know if he knows yet. And Mom and Dad are dead and now I have to tell Max it was my fault. And the only thing I feel able to do is stand here and whine to you about it like I’m four years old. And I hate that.”

  “So, what are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to figure out what’s going on is what,” Lila said. “And if you’ve got that Artifact hidden somewhere then you’d better hope it never gets into the wrong hands. I’ll be looking into it, and if I find it I’ll take it for myself. You can be sure of that.” She left her statement there, to allow the other woman time to offer an explanation or to object, but the doctor just nodded.

  “There’s a lot of work to do, and not much time. And you have some grieving to do, and other people who need attention. You’d better get to it. When you’re ready, check in with the medical staff but it’s up to you when. We’re here to help you.”

  “Sure,” Lila said, letting the word be as ambiguous as it possibly could. She left the door open on her way out and went to find the others. They were in a small staff lounge. As she approached she heard them talking and the sound of a dog crunching a biscuit. Without knowing exactly why she found herself stopping outside before they saw her.

  “For the last time, who doesn’t like disco?” Zal was saying. “Disco was one of the great unifying and emancipating forces of modern musical history which broke boundaries of race, class, and gender identification. Plus, it sounds fantastic. I’ll tell you whose soul doesn’t dance when it hears disco, wankersouls, that’s who. Disco is a celebration of everything that binds us together. And it’s fun. And it feels good. And I’m sick of the rest.” He sighed on an inward breath and then outwardly too. Then he said much more quietly, “Plus I always wanted to be like James Brown, or, in a pinch, Olivia Newton-John.”

  “You’re older than you look,” Malachi murmured. “At least you have the hair for the second one.”

  “I like disco,” Teazle said, in his human voice. “But I don’t like this coffee. What’s it made out of? Cat piss? It’ll never catch on.”

  “He’s right,” Max sounded weary. “When Lila comes we can get something better . . . I mean . . . can we go now? I want to go home.”

  Lila walked around the corner and stood in the doorway. She tried to smile and she thought she almost succeeded. “Come on,” she said. “It’s time. Let’s go home.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JUSTINA ROBSON was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1968. She studied philosophy and linguistics at University. After only seven years of working as a temporary secretary and 2.5 million words of fiction thrown in the bin, she sold her first novel in 1999.

  Since then she has won the 2000 amazon.co.uk Writers’ Bursary Award. She has also been a student (1992) and a teacher (2002, 2006) at the Arvon Foundation, in the UK. Her books have been variously shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Best Novel Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the John W. Campbell Award.

  In 2004 Justina was a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, on behalf of the Science Fiction Foundation.

  THE NO SHOWSVS.CYNIC GURU

  Through the agency of arcane powers beyond imagination Zal’s band, the No Shows, have been in collaboration with real-world band Cynic Guru, so that together they are able to bring you a free track for your entertainment. Listen live to “Doom,”* at www.thenoshows.com.

  This page is dedicated to Cynic Guru as a thank you for allowing themselves to be temporarily possessed by beings from beyond. They are:Roland Hartwell (vocals, violin, guitar)

  Ricky Korn (bass)

  Oli Holm (drums)

  Einar Johannsson (lead guitar, vocals)

  They also write and record many great songs entirely their own that have nothing to do with channelling the mystical aether of imaginary space-time. More information about them, their tour dates, and their music can be found on their Web sites: www.cynicguru.com and www.myspace.com/CynicGuru.