Yahvi didn’t like the way that sounded. “What happens first?”
“We’re only phase one of the interview process.”
He stopped in front of a door farther down a dark hall. Only then did Yahvi see that it was covered with tiny Aggregates.
It opened.
The room was several times larger than the one Yahvi had been held in and looked just like the conference room at Yelahanka, minus the viewing screens and the table.
There was only a single chair . . . and half a dozen anteater Reiver Aggregates, all of them buzzing, chattering, and moving in that disturbing way, some twirling, some vibrating in place, all of them making Yahvi feel as uncomfortable and alone as she’d ever felt.
Counselor Nigel planted Yahvi in the chair, then withdrew from the room. As if responding to a signal, the anteaters closed in, one on each side, one blocking the exit, one facing her.
“You are Yahvi Stewart-Radhakrishnan,” the Aggregate thing said in its childlike voice. “You have entered Free Nation U.S. without permission and in a hostile manner.”
“Correct,” she said. Given her heaving chest and constricted throat, she was lucky she could utter a word.
“What did you hope to accomplish?”
“To reconnect with fellow humans,” she said. Then, realizing there was no point in hiding anything, she added, “And to destroy all of you.”
A different Aggregate to her left asked the next question. “How would this destruction be accomplished?”
Her parents would freak out if they heard this, but the Aggregates would learn anyway. “By importing a virus that would use your own ability to communicate as a vector.”
She had hoped for some kind of response: nothing. Maybe they already knew. Then a third Aggregate, to her right, said, “Are you carrying this virus with you?”
She so wanted to smile and say, “You bet! It’s right here in my pocket!” Except that this was no place for jokes . . . and she didn’t have a pocket. “It’s in our cargo.”
From behind her, a different Aggregate said, “Why are you so cooperative?”
“The counselors convinced me it would be to my benefit,” she said.
So far the questioning was no more taxing than what Yahvi had experienced with THE—aside from the creepy nature of the questioners. A pause gave her time to remember just what it was she and every human hated about the Reivers.
It wasn’t just their resemblance, in one mode, to terrestrial tropical bugs that would swarm and sting. Yahvi thought the anteater model was close to terrifying in its sounds, its inability to be still, its inexplicable behavior.
They reproduced quickly, too, using up resources and quickly imposing their will on everything around them. Creatures that got in the way or failed to get out of the way with sufficient speed were simply . . . eliminated. One fact Rachel had shared with Yahvi before Adventure’s launch: The population of the former United States had fallen from 330,000,000 in 2019 to two thirds that. “It might even be less,” she had said, “because that isn’t a census number, just an ISRO estimate based on acreage for food production and consumption. The Reivers are slowly eliminating human beings.”
And that was the problem, Yahvi realized. What she hated about the Reivers was their lack of any detectable emotions or concern for others—or for themselves! Their formations would march into harm’s way, being picked off in twos and threes like soldiers in a Civil War charge, never stopping or changing course. What kind of beings gave up their lives so easily? Eagerly?
Maybe you didn’t mind dying if you were just one element in a larger machine.
But that was a terrifying thought, too—
They were closing in now. She could actually smell them, a tangy odor that reminded her of the subway passages within Keanu: old, machine-related, nasty.
She wanted to scream.
And then she blacked out.
When she woke up, the Aggregates had backed off . . . and the first sensation she noted was a burning smell. Her? God, the skin on her left leg was blistered! It didn’t hurt, really. There was a gel of some kind on it.
Fearing that they had drilled into her skull and detected the transmitter, she touched her head. No, thank God.
But her clothes were in disarray, as if they had stripped and then possibly probed her.
And how long had she been out? It was night; the darkness outside the windows hadn’t changed.
She jumped to her feet, towering half a meter over them, shouting, “What did you do to me?”
An Aggregate in the corner said, “You were examined.”
She pointed to her leg. “Did you put something in me?” She was afraid that her head wasn’t the only possible receptacle.
A different Aggregate spoke. “You were examined.”
Was that a yes or a no? God, she hated these things. Her frustration caused her to lose control, weeping and shouting, “I’ve told you everything I know! I’m a child! And I need to see my parents!”
To her amazement, the Aggregate formation performed a dancelike maneuver, eight of them exiting the room, leaving four to arrange themselves around Yahvi. “Follow the formation,” the one to her left said.
That was easy enough, though the damage to her leg made walking tricky. It wasn’t the skin that hurt; she experienced sharp pains up and down the leg, as if it had been shot full of electricity.
Which was probably what had happened. Yahvi wondered why the Aggregates had resorted to these harsh techniques—hadn’t they been able to tell that she was being truthful?
Maybe they had orders to torture her and it didn’t matter what she’d said.
Maybe they were just mean.
The ground floor of the Edwards building was buzzing with so many Aggregate formations that Yahvi thought she would black out again, from the noise, the sight, and, now that she was sensitized to it, the smell. The whole scene suggested chaos.
She saw several THE counselors, too, including Nigel, Cory, and Ivetta, who watched her from across the room with a look that Yahvi found troubling. It was as if they were surprised she was still walking, still alive!
Counselor Nigel stepped forward, sliding between whirling Aggregates with a grace Yahvi didn’t expect. “We didn’t know,” he said.
“Didn’t know what?” Yahvi said, forced to shout over the buzzing. She waited for an elbow in her ribs from one of her escorts.
“The thing you mentioned.” Counselor Nigel looked human and vulnerable for the first time. “It’s bad for them.”
The thing she had mentioned? Oh, Yahvi thought: the cloud in the east.
Rachel and Pav were sitting outside in a tiny quadrangle filled with metal tables. It was a place for lunch or even a picnic, Yahvi realized, in better times. Or at least in daylight.
They flung themselves at each other. Yahvi heard a groan from her father, and saw, even in the near-darkness, that he had a huge bruise on his face; he had clearly been beaten. “Oh my God, Daddy, did those things do this?”
“Those little shitboxes? Their arms would break if they hit you. No, this was the human guards.”
“Your father tried to overcome four-to-one odds,” Rachel said, in a tone that Yahvi recognized as teasing. Tonight, though, it was clearly affectionate, possibly even proud.
Looking closely at her mother, she saw signs of distress. “Did they question you?”
“Of course.” She held out her arm, displaying the same kind of blistering Yahvi had experienced on her leg. “What about you?”
“It was mostly THE,” she said. When Rachel gave a confused look, she added: “Trans-Human Evolutionaries or whatever they call themselves.”
“The kids in the black suits,” Pav said.
Rachel seemed to accept that. It was too dark for her to see how Yahvi had been damaged, and while Yahvi had no particular des
ire to spare her mother’s feelings . . . this was not the time to offer complaints. “Where is everybody else?”
“Tea was in the room next to us, upstairs,” Rachel said.
“They kept you together?” Yahvi said.
“For a while.” She made an unhappy face. “I wasn’t able to hear everything, but I’m pretty sure she went through what I went through.”
“Which was?”
“A billion questions, many threats.”
“Was it people or Reivers?”
“People,” Rachel said. “There were three Reivers in the room, but they just watched.”
“Same with me,” Pav said. “The people were bad enough.” He seemed to shudder, which made Yahvi want to start crying again. “Xavier is in one of the rooms on this floor,” Pav said. “They took him and all our equipment to the same place.”
“Probably forcing him to make it work.”
Pav smiled. “Good luck getting Xavier to do anything he doesn’t want to.”
“He doesn’t really look like a fighter,” Yahvi said.
“You don’t have to hit someone to be resistant,” Rachel said. “Every daughter knows that, right?”
Yahvi was pleased to hear Rachel joking. It meant that she was bouncing back from the depressing flight and capture.
Pav was less amused. “He can be as passive-aggressive as he wants; the Reivers will turn him inside out to get what they want.”
Zeds was captive in another building. “He really slammed a couple of the soldiers around,” Pav said.
Rachel turned to him. “Probably giving you ideas, except that he’s twice your size.”
“I didn’t need his encouragement, darling.” To Yahvi, he said, “They might have fired on him, but I think they had orders to take him alive.”
“You know Zeds,” Rachel said. “He only knocked them around enough to show he could. Then he just backed off and said, ‘Where do you wish to incarcerate me?’”
Neither of them had seen Edgely. “He was pretty subdued,” Rachel said. “I don’t think this is turning out to be the adventure he wanted.”
“And Mr. Chang?”
“They shot him,” Pav said. He did not hesitate, Yahvi noticed.
Rachel added, “That’s why your father fought them.”
“Why did they kill him?”
“Does it make a difference?” Rachel said.
“They probably saw him as our ringleader. Also, he’s Chinese. I think the Reivers really hate and fear them.”
Now that the grim and near-grim updates were over, Yahvi realized how tired and sore she was. And still quite uncertain. “So where does that leave us?”
“Prisoners.” Rachel smiled. “I have to face the fact that I’ve totally fucked up this trip. The only thing we’ve done is stay locked up in rooms or airplanes.”
“What did you think you were going to be doing?” Pav said. “Grabbing a gun and shooting Reivers one by one?”
The idea had a certain appeal to Yahvi, even though she’d never held a gun—she’d barely even seen one. “Do either of you know what these things are so upset about?”
Rachel looked at Pav. “You mean, beyond our presence?”
“The cloud in the east. My THE boy said it was bad news for the Reivers. I think it was some kind of accident.”
Pav sat up straighter. “You know—”
“Oh, shit,” Rachel said. “I overheard one of the humans, not in a black suit, say something about an accident and a facility that was critically damaged.” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “The Ring is off that way!”
“It would be nice to think that someone hit our target for us,” Pav said.
Rachel was shaking her head. “The word was accident, not attack. They probably blew some gaskets. And the Reivers never give up; even if the place burned to the ground, they’d build it right back up again.”
“Might take a while.”
Yahvi saw her opportunity now. “We would still like to get inside it, right?”
“Well, yes,” Rachel said. “You know enough to know why.”
“Even though our original plan can’t possibly work,” Pav said. Yahvi knew that her father meant the poison pill strategy.
“What if the Reivers or Aggregates got the idea that the proteus and cargo could help them fix the Ring?” The idea had come to her between two steps as she was marched down the stairs by the Aggregates. She had to assume that their interrogations had told them everything she knew. And even though her parents didn’t think they had been subjected to Reiver Aggregate torture, it was likely it had been so intense that they didn’t remember.
This idea just seemed right.
“Do we want that?” Pav said.
Rachel was already on her feet. Yahvi knew from experience that her mother thought better when in motion. “No! But we do want to get inside the place. I’d rather take the chance we might be bringing them a tool if it puts us in position to wreck the whole thing.
“Now, who wants to be the one to tell them?”
FIRST LIGHT
17 hours and counting
FIRE LIGHT
09 MAY 2040 0001:00 MDT
COUNTDOWN CLOCK AT SITE A
CARBON-143
SITUATION: The critical anomaly aborting the First Light test required immediate action from all Aggregate formations.
All test data was frozen, then transferred to a new unit that initiated failure analysis.
The vehicles of the invading force remained on standby in Staging Areas 1, 2, and 3.
Since assembly functions were on hold, Aggregate Carbon-143’s formation was one of those tasked with failure analysis.
NARRATIVE: The order to step back from the assembly station and report immediately to central control caused considerable agitation within the A72 formation, not just with Carbon-143. It was too early in the day for a reboot, and the constant stream of admonitions and encouragements that had been flowing up and down the information trees had a residual effect on every unit: This critical work needed to be accomplished now! Why were they interrupting it?
Carbon-143 noted that her own consternation was shared by eight other members of her formation. This was itself an anomalous condition—a promising one, if one believed, as Carbon-143 did, that the rigid unquestioning conformity of Aggregate existence was not the only or best choice.
As she withdrew from the assembly line, she saw Dehm hurrying past. “Hello?” she said, knowing it was risky. (Suppose the rest of her formation continued on to the control center? How would her late arrival be received or explained?)
“You should stay away from me,” he said. Even to Carbon-143’s senses, never especially perceptive with human features and emotions, Dehm looked shaken. “We’re all under suspicion,” he said.
For a moment Carbon-143 lost precise mental function. Any examination of her data use and activities would label her a failed unit, to be followed swiftly by disassembly.
Dehm must have seen some kind of reaction. “Not you,” he said. “Humans. Every human in this fucking place.”
He hurried off.
Having no destination in mind, Carbon-143 followed her formation to the rest place.
UPDATE: Within an hour, a burst of information informed Aggregate Carbon-143 that four human workers had been suspected of failures in the First Light test. These ranged from late warnings of changing weather conditions to improper coding of mirror convergence algorithms.
No sabotage was suspected. Nevertheless, all four humans had been terminated.
Aggregate Carbon-143 accepted this news calmly. She had been given a warning, after all.
Only then did she see the list of terminated humans and the name
Randall Dehm.
For several seconds, and the second time in this day, Carbon-143’s processing functions failed to operate at optimum utility.
She accessed the name again, and received unwelcome confirmation.
She even accessed imagery from the termination.
Four humans, two men and two women, all thin, all dressed in similar white T-shirts and khaki trousers, all nervous, stood in a dimly lit cell. The image was fixed, from a security camera, and while it appeared that three Aggregates were present, none from formations with recognizable designations—like punitive units.
Dehm’s last words were, “Fuck you.”
Then he was struck from behind by a bolt of energy, collapsing in a terminal heap.
Carbon-143 broke the link.
Before she could process the experience, she and the entire formation were informed that they were now part of the failure analysis team.
FORECAST: The failure analysis consumed twenty hours, time sufficient for six formations completing separate reviews, with six more repeating each step.
The twelve conclusions agreed on the cause of the First Light failure.
Three primary remediations, as voted by all twelve analysis formations, were (A) greater rigor in adherence to data from the Ring’s external environment (weather, especially wind and temperature), (B) repair of the damaged Ring structure, and (C) insertion of a final go/no-go decision maker in the launch commit checklist.
The system code was already being revised to accomplish step A. Revisions would be complete within nine days.
The forecast for step B, repairs, was also nine days, but flagged as unsustainable without additional resources. Carbon-143 knew that additional formations would be deployed, though materials and assembly times were the true forcing factors and would almost certainly dictate a failure to meet that deadline.
Those were mechanical remediations. Step C could be classed as managerial/political.
An entity other than an Aggregate needed to be inserted into the final decision-making process.
(There were other Aggregate modes, though smaller units, the kind that, Carbon-143 realized, she was composed of. These were operating in autonomous mode.)
Heaven’s Fall Page 33
