Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition

by Rich Horton

  “Max!” Petra was too depressed to even spark up at being called “girl.” “This isn't a joke. This thing's too big for us to grab. Even these guys, with a full team, will have trouble.”

  The thought was bitter. I could just see Chet and his crew rolling out of their wagons and swaggering into the store, the tails of their expensive black coats flapping as they collected the goods....

  “Hey,” I said. “I don't think I'll have to call Chet at all. They have an agent in here, swept up. He switched out of uniform, but seems to like the feel of the duster around his ankles. I should have guessed it just from that. He's been watching us. He knows the whole story.”

  Now that I thought about it, it was obvious. When I'd grabbed him, Duster had given me completely false information about where Maureen had headed. That wasn't too suspicious in itself. People sometimes saw AI acolytes as some kind of oppressed ethnic group and tried to protect them. And he'd slid around a little on whether he had to get to work, or get a birthday present to his mother. But the clincher was the way he'd gotten all nasty about our D-level license.

  Except I hadn't had a chance to show him my license. He'd known the whole situation without seeing it.

  “Who?” Petra demanded. “Who is it?”

  I described Duster to her.

  Her face flushed. “I can't believe it! I know who that is. We never got along, at B&C. Arrogant little.... Bastards! They had this whole thing set up. How far back? Maybe since I left.”

  She and Max were both still excited, but I was ready to go home, take a hot shower, and go to bed, despite the fact that it wasn't even noon yet.

  “Man, we are screwed.” Max shook his head.

  I'd switched careers quite a few times in my life. Each time, it put me at the bottom of the hierarchy, behind people who, dumber or smarter, had had the sense to pick something and work their way up in it. And now I was here, go-to guy in a second-rate AI hunting troupe, tied to a charming hysteric and a depressive control freak. It was the most fun I'd ever had, the first time I'd ever felt that I made a useful contribution.

  So, I guessed it was time to make one. A thought had been nibbling at me since I realized who Duster had to be. He had no idea I had figured it out. None of them did. As far as Chet and his gang were concerned, we were all still the patsies he'd set us up to be.

  “Petra,” I said. “It's my fault. I got that information from—”

  “Never mind whose fault it is. Do you have anything to offer but your guilt?”

  So she was back to being hard-ass manager. That was fine. I did have something to give her. If it was still there....

  I searched down the path toward where I had first encountered Duster. And there, vivid on the emerald of the moss, lay the orchid he had tried so hard to take off with.

  “I have an aicon.” Sure enough, if you looked carefully, which I hadn't before, you could see the delicate circuitry embedded in the petals. “It's linked into the AI its acolytes call ‘The Gardener.’ And one of those acolytes, Maureen Nikolaides, is still on the loose. I think we should leave her that way.”

  “Okay.” Petra crossed her arms. “I like an employee who can turn a performance problem to some advantage. What are we going to do with her?”

  “We're going to let her escape. Along with her AI.”

  * * * *

  “Good news, folks!” I'd worked hard on the tone: a chipper front over defeat and failure. “You're free to go. Just a small debrief, and we can have you out of here. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  They looked up at me. Most of them had been sitting around a folding table that was littered with half-eaten bagels, orange juice cartons, and mini jelly containers. Phones, screens, and other communication devices had been inactivated. That usually, after a long pause, resulted in something like a party. People often made friends in those few hours, and Gorson Cog Repo even had two marriages to its credit. None of us had been invited to either wedding.

  The data-futures lady, Maude, got up and bustled out past me, followed by her blue-haired friend. She gave a farewell wave to the shirtless plant maintainer, Alphonse, whose thick chest hair was now frosted with powdered sugar. He smiled vaguely, as if he'd already forgotten who she was.

  Duster sat by himself, erect in a chair, like a Japanese warlord waiting for a report from a samurai. He raised his eyebrows when he saw me. If I was right about him, he'd need to move now. If we completely disengaged from our pursuit, there would be no legal way for his team to take it over.

  “What happened?” he said. “What's going on?”

  “I genuinely apologize, sir,” I said. “We were in error. There is no AI present here.”

  “No ... what are you talking about?”

  “Oh, that's internal business, I'm afraid. Our information was imperfect. Here's your phone.”

  He shoved it into a pocket, then remembered his cover story. “My mom ... I'll need to go back and get that orchid. If you've cleared out....”

  “Five minutes,” I said. “Five minutes, and we will have officially declared this area AI-free—”

  That was too much for him. He stood up. “Jesus. You guys can't even handle a simple ... let me out right now. Maybe there's still something to be salvaged from the situation.”

  Gone was the businessman obsessed with getting his old mom a flower. This was a well-paid, professional, class-B AI hunter. One, I reminded myself, who was just as much at risk of losing his job as I was.

  I had to play it carefully. I frowned, trying to look confused but not completely befuddled. “You're a hunter, too? You should have mentioned it. I had a nice cherry Danish I was saving, I could have let you—”

  “Let me out of here! There is an AI under there. If you pull back, you'll lose it completely.”

  “Thanks for helping out, but there's nothing under the floor. The cavern's completely empty. Just a bunch of pots and stuff down there. Fertilizer bags. We thought it was weird, that it was so big, but maybe they're planning to expand.”

  He stared at me, stunned. The subterranean space was clearly where most of the processing power was. A week or so before, Petra had driven a public works truck around the mall, seemingly examining pavement, but really sending seismic mini-shocks through the ground, outlining the nonconducting empty space that hung under the plant store like a giant egg. Our theory was that they had hidden the excavation waste as substrate in their various jobs. The rock and dirt from under the mall now resided in living rooms all over southeastern Pennsylvania.

  “You've got the perimeter completely tight?” he said.

  “We did. Sewer pipes, mall access, everything. Nothing in or out.” I smiled with pride at our thoroughness.

  “Ah, you did?”

  “Well, we can't very well sequester the whole mall now, can we? Business has to go on. The place has deliveries to make. They lose a shipment, we've got penalties to pay. Some of that stuff's perishable.”

  “Shipment?” His rising tone was so outraged that it almost made me break character by laughing. “Where? Show me!”

  “I think all those plants are paid for already, but sure. Sure. Come on.”

  We ran through the plants. I now knew where the path to the rear led, so I was able to get lost convincingly.

  After a bit of confusion, during which I thought he would try to strangle me, we got straightened out and found the loading dock at the rear of the store. The truck full of plants was just pulling out of the alley. Max had had some trouble pulling the driver out of the donut shop where he'd relaxed, but he was now on his way to make his deliveries, just a bit late.

  “Damn it!” Duster ran down the access alley, long coat flying, as he yelled into his phone. “Get a team down to the 202 onramp. We've got a good possibility of a live escape! What? Yes, I'm sure! Hurry!”

  It wouldn't take them more than a few minutes to discover that the thing was full of nothing but plants. And they were professional enough not to pull everyone off surveill
ance here at the store. But their surveillance would be light for just a bit. I moved.

  I'd thought about how Maureen had arrived and disappeared. There didn't seem to be any access at ground level....

  I wasn't as limber as she was, but I was still a primate. I grabbed a branch and clambered up. The trunk seemed solid, at least on this side. I swung around. My feet slipped out from under me, and I ended up dangling, ten feet or so in the air. That would look just perfect, when Chet, Duster, and the rest of the B-squad came sauntering in to take care of things.

  I worked up some momentum and managed to get a toehold on the rough bark. That gave me just enough support to walk hand over hand to the next branch, then lift a foot and get, at last, solid support.

  And there it was: on this side, the trunk just ended, with a ring of branches around it. A dark hole descended, with a convenient maintenance ladder on one side.

  “I'm going down,” I said. “Wish me luck.”

  No one did.

  * * * *

  Maureen and I spotted each other at the same instant. Instead of running, she charged straight at me.

  And as she did, I caught a glimpse of what she held in her hand. She was packing ... I guess I wouldn't call it “heat,” but close enough: a neuromuscular junction suppressor, sort of a remote-control curare-by-RF. Worked on a human the same way that a HERF gun worked on electronics: AI's Revenge. The thing made no noise at all. I might have stood there with my mouth open, and then collapsed without closing it, if she hadn't, again, acted a bit too soon. The Gardener might be up to B-level, but its staff still required some training. My whole left arm was numb. Jesus! I ran, stumbling and off balance, my arm dangling like a length of Italian sausage.

  The Gardener's secret hideout was a vaulted space about twenty feet high that had been carved out of the earth beneath the minimall. Dirt had been heat sintered into a crude support shell, lumpy and sagging, with concrete squirted in here and there, seemingly at random. Clearly work done without a permit.

  A few dim lights showed roots that dangled through the ceiling into masses of perfusion tubes. There, in the center of a tangle of infomycelia, was what had to be what Maureen and her fellow plantsmen called the Gardener: a few complicated shapes that might, at one time, have been irrigation and growth hormone controllers, now grown into a self-aware entity.

  I dodged behind it. It was the only possible thing I could do.

  It wasn't enough.

  “Stop,” Maureen said.

  A hummingbird that had somehow made it down into the cellar buzzed through the air, zigzagging in its search for a blossom.

  “Don't kill the poor bird,” I said.

  “What?” Her finger was on the trigger, but she didn't pull it yet.

  “You may think I'm guilty of something, but that bird hasn't done anything. Let it.... “It floated away. “Okay.” I scrunched my eyes shut.

  “What are you talking about, mister? This thing is nonlethal. Just a little relaxation for you—”

  “Sure. If you have a sharp crash cart team ready to intubate and a ventilator warmed up. The diaphragm nerve connections go too, just as with curare. My breathing will stop. I shouldn't tell you, but, lucky for you, an autopsy won't show anything. Unless someone decides to do a neurotransmitter assay and discovers that there's just too little acetylcholine in the postsynaptic receptors. I think you can bluff your way past that one. Not that it will matter much to me, one way or another.”

  She looked at me. I tried to act as if I were staring death in the face. Where the hell was Petra with Max's explosives?

  She shrugged. “I won't tell the Gardener, then. She's kind of sentimental.”

  She squeezed the trigger just as the ceiling fell in on us.

  * * * *

  Max's explosives had done a lot of damage. I heard cracking and shifting as the poorly engineered structure started to collapse over our heads. A tree, its roots loose, leaned over with a creak, and toppled. Soil showered after it, then a sizable chunk of concrete, which hit with a hollow thud. Solid columns of light rose around us. Concrete dust clogged my sinuses. I couldn't see where Maureen had gone. I didn't want her hurt. That wasn't the point of this particular exercise.

  I crawled through what looked like a combination plant nursery and machine shop, damaged by the cascade of rubble from above. An overturned sprouting tray dripped hydroponic fluid. Grow lights dangled over a project: a veined flower, like a crocus, with its petals floating free, supported by lines of translucent, glowing threads that marked out some complex function, soon to be concealed. A hedge of elaborate manipulator arms labored delicately over it, pulling lines through, connecting others, like a sewing bee. Several aicon leaves floated in sealed plastic bags on an old potting table.

  The Gardener's original purpose had been to create biocircuits, hyperflow xylem, physiological sensors that allowed flower scents to reflect or lead the moods of the people in the room with them. So now it created aicons for its dirty-fingernailed followers. I patted the orchid in my pocket. It was still linked in, but the Gardener had no idea that it still existed. As far as it was concerned, Duster's orchid had vanished.

  Someone groaned. I dug through the rubble, pulled off several stalks of bamboo, and found Maureen, bruised but still alive.

  And conscious. “Get away from me.”

  “I'd like nothing better. But you're the one who's going to have to get away. With your little gardening gadget, if you please.”

  “What are you—?”

  “Max!” I yelled. “Over here.”

  Max deftly backed up two trailers with low railings, pushing them with an electric tractor. He'd duct-taped a big yellow flashlight to it as a crude headlight. It shone forward, away from us, into the darkness of the escape tunnel that the acolytes had dug over long months, between the humming aquarium bases for the fish tanks that stretched up into the restaurants on the top floor. I could see the gleam of fish as they reached the bottom and turned to go back up.

  “Don't run over her!” I waved frantically and he came to a halt a few inches short of Maureen's outstretched fingers.

  Max peered down at her. “She good for this? Or should I grab another of these Druoids?”

  “She's good. Just give her a couple of minutes. The roof just fell in on her.”

  “Hmph.” Max was carefully unimpressed. We went to work on the Gardener, in full view of Maureen, who seemed unable, or unwilling, to understand what was going on.

  I whacked at power interlocks. They were standard safety-release, but had been wrapped in resistant tape, then encased in resin. I figured that it would definitely be a problem to lobotomize your AI by tripping over a data cord, but this rose to the level of paranoia. Max and I sawed through, released the connections, pulled off the power.

  Together, we levered the bulk of the Gardener into the carts, along with a decent selection of interface devices.

  “You got that connection gadget?” Max said.

  I glanced at Maureen, but she was checking over the Gardener, making sure it was all right. “The aicon? Yes.”

  “Give it to me. I'll take care of it.”

  “You'll—”

  “Just give it. You'll see.”

  Sometimes Max knew what he was doing. I handed it to him and he shoved it into a pocket.

  “Is it ready to get out of here?” Petra asked from the darkness.

  “Just a couple of minutes and she's ready to roll,” Max said.

  Maureen looked up from her AI. “What's this about?”

  “Us helping you to escape, you mean?” I grinned at her. She remained expressionless. “It's kind of complicated....”

  “We want your AI,” Petra said. “We can't have it. Legal problems. But I'll be damned if I let those bozos upstairs get it either. If you rip out of here in the next two minutes, sister, you'll have it free. Otherwise, you're a bounty for our competition. I really wouldn't want to see that. Do you?”

  The silence stretched. By
this point Duster would have realized that the truck was a distraction, and would be back with the rest of his team to cut off all routes of escape. As I thought about that, I found myself irritated with Maureen for not taking this obvious opportunity. In a real sense, it didn't matter if we were lying or not. If she didn't do something, her AI was done for.

  “Ah, screw it.” Max flipped a switch and the tractor motor hummed back to life. “She's too dumb. I'm taking this out. Ten percent finder's fee is better than nothing. Better than sitting around down here trying to slap some sense into an AI-worshipping interior decorator.”

  “Wait!” Maureen turned to me. “Is this true? You're letting me go?”

  That was quite unnecessary. What made her trust me all of a sudden? “Yes. But not because we want to.”

  “I wouldn't have it any other way.” She hopped on the tractor and hummed off into the dark tunnel.

  “Okay,” Petra said. “Have we really just let that thing go?”

  “Nah,” Max said. “Me and Taibo, we're all set. Now, let's see what the smoothies do when they show up.”

  * * * *

  “I have to say, Taibo, that was a nice try with the truck.” Chet smiled at me. “Anton's pissed, though. I'd suggest staying out of his way when he finally turns up.”

  Chet's team had arrived. Guys in long coats had spilled out of sedans with dark-tinted windows and smoothly closed off the mall. There seemed to be dozens of them, each with a stack of gear, a support vehicle, and a separate online channel of coverage. I was no doubt showing up on thirty different feeds right now, edited in different ways, with various explanatory text crawls on my chest. I tried to look iconically like the Losing Team. It was surprisingly easy.

  “Anton” had turned out to be Duster's real name. He had chased that truck for much longer than we'd anticipated. Max's hopped-up spiel to the driver had persuaded him to expect desperate plant hijackers, and he had led Duster and his team a merry chase along various Amish-cart-blocked roads down toward Lancaster. Duster, I gathered, had gotten a bit out of hand at the seizure, and been arrested by some local cops. The fact that the truck had come up completely clean of any AI activity would not do him any good at any hearing. Chet's team would have to finish their job here before anyone could try to get him out of the Upper Leacock lockup.