The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com
Page 350
I cannot feel such. It is a limitation.
She fought the biting bile in her throat. “More than that. It’s a blindness.”
I perceive the effect.
“I didn’t say I’d turn you off, you realize.”
For the first time the AI paused. Then she felt prickly waves in her sensorium, a rising acrid scent, dull bass notes strumming.
I cannot bear aloneness long.
“So I guessed.”
You wish to torture me.
“Let’s say it will give you time to think.”
I— Another pause. I wish experience. Mentalities cannot persist without the rub of the real. It is the bargain we make.
“We will work on your mathematics and make music of it. Then we will think how to…deal with you.” She wondered if the AI could read the clipped hardness in her words. The thought occurred: Is there a way to take our mathematics and make music of it, as well? Cantor’s theorem? Turing’s halting problem result? Or the Frenet formulas for the moving trihedron of a space curve—that’s a tasty one, with visuals of flying ribbons…
Silence. The pod began to cool. The chill deepened as she waited and the AI did not speak and then it was too much. She rapped on the cowling. The sound was slight and she realized she was hearing it over the hammering of her heart.
They got her out quickly, as if fearing the Sigma might have means the techs did not know. They were probably right, she thought.
As she climbed out of the yawning pod shell the techs silently left. Only Masoul remained. She stood at attention, shivering. Her heart had ceased its attempts to escape her chest and run away on its own.
“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “cruelty is necessary. You were quite right.”
She managed a smile. “And it feels good, too. Now that my skin has stopped trying to crawl off my body and start a new career on its own.”
He grimaced. “We will let the Sigma simmer. Your work on the music will be your triumph.”
“I hope it will earn well for the Library.”
“Today’s music has all the variety of a jackhammer. Your work soars.” He allowed a worried frown to flit across his brow. “But you will need to…expel…this thing that’s within you.”
“I…Yes.”
“It will take—”
Abruptly she saw Kane standing to the side. His face was a lesson in worry. Without a word she went to him. His warmth helped dispel the alien chill within. As his arms engulfed her the shivering stopped.
Ignoring the Prefect, she kissed him. Hungrily.
For Rudy Rucker
Copyright (C) 2011 by Gregory Benford
Art copyright (C) 2011 by John Jude Palencar