“You’re not exactly making me feel better,” Bobbi muttered.
Violet smiled faintly. “I’m sorry. I just don’t think this was ever a question of humanity, my lady. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter either way, though. It was his decision to break things up and leave.”
Bobbi bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah. I guess I just don’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
Violet’s brows arched. “So you think he’s dead now?”
“He has to be. Either that or taken by the Yathi, which means he’s going to be dead eventually. Assuming we don’t fail.”
“What of Walken?”
She had Bobbi there. “Yeah. But we don’t even know if it’s him behind the controls. Or that he isn’t crazy. Crazy doesn’t mean inhuman, you know that. It doesn’t make you somehow not a person. Him getting sad about Stormy, or whoever that guy turns out to be, doesn’t mean that he isn’t going down the spiral. It just means he still gives a shit, which describes all of us in plain detail.”
Violet smiled at her. “I love that you think that way. Bobbi, you know that this doesn’t mean that you’re damaged also, right? Just because Cagliostro put that programming in your head, that doesn’t mean that you’re different now.”
“No,” Bobbi said, “You’re right. But you know…there’s still the question of that lost time in the drone factory, what we’ve talked about.”
Violet frowned. “We have talked about it, and you don’t remember anything.”
“We’ve never been able to find anything, either,” Bobbi said. “But I want to start scanning again.”
“Why?” Violet’s brows lifted. “We’ve been scanning you for years.”
“And we stopped,” Bobbi said. “That’s usually when things think they’re safe. Just…bear with me, Vi. Just get a hold of Sumire and Shaper for the moment, tell them what’s going on. Get all the scanners rezzed up. I want to see if we can tell what’s going on inside of me.”
“Just Shaper and Sumire?” Violet’s brows arched. “Don’t you think that Green and Mulcahey will want to know?”
Bobbi sighed. “Yeah. I expect that they would. What do you think, Violet? Should we let them know before we know something’s going on?”
Violet shrugged. “I don’t even know what you’re looking for. Can’t you tell me anything else?”
“I just…” Bobbi frowned, gathering her thoughts. “It’s just that I think about when we hit the drone processor in the Verge with Redeye that first time. I still don’t know what went on for me to lose all that time, you know…and I came out covered in blood. What happened there? I just blacked out.”
With a soft sigh, Violet draped her arms over Bobbi’s shoulders and touched her head against hers, so that she could look into Bobbi’s eyes. “I understand. I think, though, that you probably would’ve killed us all some time ago were you some kind of plague-carrier or some other damned thing. We’ve talked about this so many times…I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. The Yathi would have sprung their plan by now, surely.”
Bobbi looked at Violet for a long moment. This girl. “I don’t trust any of it. Maybe you’re right, but I want the scans done. Regularly.”
Violet leaned back a bit, nodding softly. “All right. But tell them.”
“They’re not going to like it. This isn’t something they knew about before.”
“Let them walk, then. They’re not going to betray us.”
“You don’t think so?” Bobbi pursed her lips as she asked it.
“I think that if you thought they would, it was a shitty decision to bring them here,” Violet said tartly. “And if you were prone to making shitty decisions, we’d probably all be dead. So tell them. I’ll do it, if you want. They might deal with it better, coming from me.”
And as sweet and helpful as Violet tried to be, Bobbi knew that if someone did take umbrage at this revelation, and they were dumb enough to bark at Violet over it, she’d bite out their throat in an instant. “I’ll tell them. Just go get those scanners running. I have to make a call before I do.”
“A call?” Violet raised a brow.
“An idea.” Bobbi nodded. “I think I might know how to track him down. Cagliostro, I mean.”
“Oh?” Lit up by the screens, Violet looked like a lovely spirit floating there. “What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when I figure it out entirely.” Bobbi nodded. “Let me know when you kids get the scanners ready.”
With that, Violet left, and Bobbi took a deep draught of her soup, still surprisingly good, despite being tepid. She put thoughts of her dear friend out of her mind, closed her eyes, and took up a pair of thin connector leads from the surface of her desk. Once more into the breach. She forced herself into her task and plugged each lead into the sockets behind her ear. If I want to know more about this situation, I have to find Cagliostro anyway. She had a feeling scanners weren’t going to provide the answers she needed.
The Network roared into place around her mind and submerged her in latent psychic warmth.
It was a simple thing, really. She couldn’t guess why she hadn’t done it before. Well, no, she reminded herself, she actually did. She’d become so used to being able to simply breeze through all human and many Yathi systems with little to no trouble at all. It had made her sharp in terms of intrusion, but she hadn’t been given a crack job, more social engineering. A spider job. Too blunt. She reached through the Network with her invisible hands. These protocols have been making me dull. And perhaps they had, but they also made her next steps painfully easy. She had no way to track down traces of Cagliostro’s code fabric, certainly, but she did know how to contact those who had done business with him, or were perhaps involved in his schemes. Mendelsohn? Maybe, but she doubted the time was right to reach out to her. Pierre? Definitely involved, but again, the time did not seem right. Instinct pointed her toward one person she should try and get her hands on, someone, of course, far from her traditional reach at this very moment.
Bobbi went through the systems of half a dozen telecommunications providers. Signals bounced between twenty different global satellites, skipping across the ionosphere until coming down to land in a dish not very far at all from Plato’s Cavern. When the reception desk at Lionel’s clinic answered, a polite young man spoke, crisp and groomed undoubtedly from years of corporate experience. They grew them young these days, after all.
“Lionel Knightley’s office, how may I help you?”
“Good afternoon,” Bobbi said pleasantly. “Is Lionel in? I’d like to speak with him, please.”
A pause. “Doctor Knightley isn’t in at the moment. Nor is he taking any new patients for the foreseeable future.”
Ah. “I’m sorry to hear that. When do you expect him in the office again?”
“Not for some time,” the receptionist said, something in his tone. Uncertainty, perhaps. “I can take a message, if you like.”
“I understand that he’s out of town,” Bobbi replied. “But I’m sure that you’re still in touch with him. Won’t you please tell him that Roberta January called? I’d like to speak with him at his earliest convenience.”
“Of course,” the receptionist said. “But please keep in mind that it may take some time for the doctor to reply. May I ask what this is about?”
“Ah, yes.” Bobbi chuckled. “Please tell him that I’d like to discuss his prosthetics supplier, if you please. Say it just like that. He’ll understand.”
The man on the line faltered further. “Of course, Miss…January. Was there anything else?”
“Oh! Yes, let me leave you my number.” She rattled off a throwaway line, one that ducted through a Sprint Orbital satellite before patching to a secure link, a spidery funnel indeed. The young man on the other line thanked her and hung up. At the precise moment he did so, Bobbi executed a trace program, something she always kept on hand as part of her regular arsenal of software – it attached to a satphone unit that the clinic apparently used for
its calls, piggybacking the signal Bobbi knew would be coming and pursuing it across the ether to its source. The expanding tangle of trace lines surprised her; the path the signal took bounced around the planet more times than even what she had set up, no less than eighty-three turns around the global communications satellite system and then routed out into space.
Well, well… An orbital exchange. Treehaus.
Treehaus Station resided in a small O’Neill cylinder equal parts habitat, resort, and perhaps factory complex. It was one of the first orbital habitats–not that there were many–and it hung in suspension at one of the Lagrange points between the Earth and the Moon. So that’s where Lionel had ended up? For what purpose would he abandon his clinic yet again and vanish into space?
Bobbi considered the possibilities. He could simply be on business, of course, or on vacation. Based on the sight of him that night in the clinic, she guessed him pretty close to stone bugfuck crazy, as exposure of the unprepared to the Yathi tended to do. And he was tied to Mendelsohn, so he might well be doing business for her up there. The Yathi did not go there, after all. It would be safe. Why did Bobbi never take her people up there?
Because you aren’t an all-human shop. Nobody had ever been able to discover why the Yathi did not go into space. All they knew was that when you tried to make someone possessed by one of the alien minds, either still integrated or Reclaimed, they swiftly fell into a catatonia that took some time to recover from. The fear of the void, or perhaps something else? A psychological mystery nobody had been able to crack.
Violet finally returned and announced preparations were complete down in medbay. Bobbi didn’t feel much as they went down the hall, but Violet’s hand warmed hers as they walked down to where the ranging eyes of the scanners waited.
gincourt sped out of the Southwest, winging its way north. The speed of its passing caused its airframe to tremble, such that the pulsing of its nuclear heart sounded like the growling of an enraged sky. Were Walken a superstitious man, he might have considered it a bad omen. But he already knew his destination came with a near guarantee of conflict. Would she at least listen to him, or would she reject him out of hand? Would she try to kill him? He wondered if she actually could. If anyone among humanity could, then surely it would be her.
“Perhaps.” Walken nodded. “But I would prefer it to be a human face they see at first, even if it will be a shock. I am not…I am not anything Bobbi will remember. Even my face is different, would you not agree?”
“Maybe it’s different in that you have their paleness and such,” he said. “But otherwise you’re the same as you were, right?”
“No. Not the same.”
The darkness in his tone took him by surprise, and Jacinto as well, who slipped out of the pilot’s seat and into the aisle. “Yeah, well. I know what you mean, I’m just saying that an ID could be made pretty easily.”
“I could be anyone,” Walken said. “Her lieutenant, Violet. She will be able to tell that you are human, and that will be an easier start of things. Trust me in this.”
Jacinto sighed. “All right, man. If that’s what you want. So what am I supposed to say to them?”
“You’ll know what to say,” Walken said. “Just be truthful. Everything else will follow. I trust you.”
Shrugging, Jacinto leaned against the side of the cockpit, folding his arms over his chest. “You don’t make it easy. But yeah, assuming they don’t shoot me as soon as I come out of the ship, I’ll try my best.”
“They won’t do that,” Walken said. “I shall make sure of that.”
“I bet you will.” Jacinto smirked. “You’re probably fast enough to snatch the bullets out of the goddamned air.”
Walken gave him a flat look. “It will not be necessary. Are you certain that you wish to proceed?”
Jacinto gave him a nod. “I figure that you know her best. I never was able to figure out women anyway.”
“I expect that you will not regret the decision.” Walken smiled, and doing so felt the complex of ice within him crack just a little. “Just don’t take her for granted, like I did, and all will be well.”
His heavy brows lifted, and Jacinto’s expression shifted to one of curiosity and surprise. “‘Take her for granted?’ I thought that you two were on solid footing before that horrible old puta took you.”
“Ah, I had thought so then,” said Walken. “But looking back now, I see that it was not so.” The cracks in the ice began to seal, mortared with old regrets. “We did not know one another for very long, you see. We both followed the plan that Stadil–Cagliostro–had engineered for us at the Mother’s request. The truth of the matter is that I was already a compromised person, not just by the influence of the Yathi mind within me, but by my own human failings. There was much that I should have shared with her, and much more that I should have asked.” He sighed. “I did not, however. Instead, our interactions were mostly driven by fear, hormones, and the desire to solve the mystery that had been dangled before us. You see.” Walken turned in his seat to face Jacinto. “That’s the terrible thing about it; she was dragged into this entire affair because of me. Oh, I understand that she pursued the truth behind my disappearance of her own accord, and because the Mother of Systems had her own plans for her. However, that does not take away the fact that my own failings set all of this in motion in the first place.”
Jacinto seemed to think about this a moment. Behind him, somewhere in the distance, the cloud sea glimmered with the stuttering flash of a brewing storm. “I don’t know if I buy that. I mean certainly, you might have been more of an asshole at the time, but like you said, she was a big girl. She didn’t have to follow Stadil’s directions, especially after he died. I understand that you wished that she hadn’t been involved in this whole thing, but she is, and she’s done amazing work. She’s helping the human race, and she’s doing it through her own efforts. Don’t take that away from her because of your own regrets.”
Walken stared at him, astonished. “I am wrong, then. It would appear that not all of my failings have been erased with what I have become. Thank you.” Bitterness welled up inside of him, bitterness and disappointment with himself. He turned back in his seat to stare straight ahead.
Despite obviously wanting to press the matter further, Jacinto seemed to take the hint. “All right. I’m going to hit the head, and then we’ll have to prep for descent. Do you know if these people have any kind of anti-air defenses?”
Walken kept his eyes trained straight ahead.” They will have had to keep a low profile. Defensive installations might tip off watching eyes. Thank you again, Jacinto. I have much to think about before we reach our destination.”
“I can just imagine.” Jacinto wrinkled his nose, and headed down the aisle.” Call me if anything happens, then.” He left Walken sitting alone with his thoughts – and with his shame. He had so much to make up to Bobbi if she would let him. If he even could.
Thirty minutes later, the Agincourt circled Seattle from on high like a vast black vulture. Jacinto sat quietly in the pilot’s seat, poring over the instruments in search of any sign of alarm.
Walken had considered that already.
Jacinto said.
Walken said nothing for a moment. He did not believe this to be the case at all, but he would hardly tell Jacinto that.
The nervous energy radiating from Jacinto’s lanky frame radiated like electricity – it seemed to fill the whole aircraft, crackling through every beam and weld, recirculating into Walken as if by data line. Walken reached out to the plane’s comms with his mind and closed his eyes, sinking back into the machine. He felt the satellite transmitter open up within him like an eye, his thoughts a thin ray of invisible light stretching toward the heavens. He rode it into the same Sprint satellite he had used to reach Knightley’s office. He did not attempt to hide himself when he dialed the hotline number Jacinto had given him. He did not want Bobbi to think him anything but who he was. The call made its way over the course of milliseconds to the exchange to which Bobbi’s hotline connected, dialing in over another handful of stops to its destination.
“Good evening,” answered a woman’s serene voice. “Thompson Surgical Clinic, how may I help you?”
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 40
