by C. Gockel
“Get off him, ‘bot, or I’ll have you powered down,” Noa said.
James drew back. The “woman” was a sex ‘bot—obviously one with a blown hygiene routine. He stared at her grimy, unblinking eye, and his body went cold.
“You like to play rough, I can do rough,” said a masculine voice.
“Let go,” Noa snapped and Carl Sagan squealed.
James spun to see Noa trying to rip her wrist away from a leering half-naked muscular man who could be 6T9’s uncouth cousin. The ‘bot’s hand did not relent, even though Carl Sagan was hanging from his arm by his teeth. “I am programmed to bring you pleasure even you do not know you are capable of,” the ‘bot said with a smirk.
James ripped his arm away from the first ‘bot. Before he’d thought about it, he had a hand around the neck of Noa’s accoster and was pushing the ‘bot up against the wall. Noa tumbled against his back, her hand still locked in the ‘bot’s grasp.
“Let me go, ‘bot! I don’t know your stupid safe word!” Noa hissed.
Staring at a spot beyond James’s shoulder, the ‘bot purred, “Does your friend want to play—?”
James slammed the ‘bot’s head into the wall, over and over, until its body started to convulse and sparks and smoke came out of its ears. “Hey!” a woman shrieked. “What are you doing to my ‘bot?”
Still pounding the ‘bot’s head, feeling like he’d been plugged into an electrical outlet, James heard what sounded like shearing metal, felt Noa twist away, and heard her shouted retort, “What the nebulas was your ‘bot doing! It wouldn’t let me go!”
James stopped slamming the machine, now hanging limply in his hands. He backed away, and it slid to the ground like a broken doll. Its neck was at an impossible angle and the force of the impacts against the wall had pushed out its eyes. Carl Sagan let go of its arm, rose to his hind four legs, and squeaked at it.
“You destroyed him!” shrieked the woman. James turned toward her, heat and anger still dancing under his skin. The woman was cheaply augmented, and wearing a sequined red dress with strategic cut outs. “He was my own special boy!”
Beside James, the ‘bot that had first accosted him said, “Hey, sailor.”
James glanced over his shoulder and found the first ‘bot still smiling. Her companion was a lifeless, broken mess of smoking wires on the floor, but she approached him undaunted. “Want to have a good time?”
Her good eye blinked. Her bad eye caught the light, and in the grime crusting it he saw a hair stuck to its surface. James backed into Noa and looked away fast, utterly revolted.
“You shouldn’t harass other people with your kinks!” Noa snarled at the woman.
“You have to pay for this! I’ll call the patrollers!” shouted the woman. James heard tears in her voice.
“Sure, sure, I’ll pay you,” he heard Noa say.
The woman sniffed. “I don’t think you can pay me enough for him.”
Beside James, the female ‘bot said, “Hey, sailor,” and put her hand on his arm again. He wrenched it away, and wanted to bolt, but Noa was still talking to the proprietress.
“I don’t doubt it,” Noa said tightly. “But maybe this will keep you quiet.” Before he realized what had happened, Noa had slipped out a stunner, pressed it to a section of the woman’s exposed belly, and was pushing her back through the door she’d emerged from.
Carl Sagan squeaked and scampered up James’s leg, under his coat, and up around his shoulders as James followed Noa into the dimly-lit building. Noa was still disguised and James felt like his mind was flickering as he took in Noa’s hologram’s thinner lips curled in a snarl and unruffled bob. He had to remind himself it was still Noa kneeling over the stunned woman lying passed out on the floor. “Damn it,” Noa snarled. “That was one of the oldest extortion routines in the book.” Her face crumpled in a frown. “If I had time …”
James heard the creaking of bedsprings. He looked around the room. It was only a few meters square with a counter and an old-fashioned bell. The walls were barren, but there were rectangular outlines of dust, as though there had once been pictures. There was a single dark hallway toward the back, with doors leading off to the side in either direction to rooms that couldn’t be larger than the size of a single bed. The creaking of bedsprings increased in volume and then were quiet.
“Help me drag her behind the counter,” Noa said.
He looked at Noa, trying to pull the larger woman, and said, brusquely, “Out of my way, go stand guard instead.” Noa didn’t argue. A moment later, they were stepping out into the street again.
“Hey, sailor,” said the familiar feminine voice. James turned away, and his eyes fell on the ‘bot he’d broken. He froze.
“I could do both of you if that’s what you like,” the female ‘bot giggled.
“James, it’s okay,” said Noa. “It’s just a ‘bot. You didn’t kill anyone.”
She thought he was feeling guilt for the broken ‘bot. It wasn’t guilt he was feeling, it was terror. Not about destroying the male ‘bot, but at the female’s unrelenting programming loop, her state of disrepair, and her grime-coated eyes. She was alive, she could see, but she was oblivious, and helpless.
“James!” Noa said, shaking his arm. His eyes went to hers—and instead of the usual brown that was so dark it was black, he saw hazel eyes. The bob, the tan skin, she looked like Monica. Or the ‘bot.
The female ‘bot put a hand on James’s shoulder … and James finally was able to move. Not looking at Noa or the hologram she wore, he plunged down the street. “She didn’t stop trying to seduce me, even when she knew it would get her killed,” James murmured. Something in a dark corner of his mind was tickling his consciousness, like a sinister little application he couldn't shut off. It felt like a ticking time bomb.
“She’s a ‘bot,” Noa said. “She’s just following her programming.”
They brushed past some drunken revelers. “Did she want to seduce me, or was she afraid but had to follow her programming regardless?” whispered James, or the viral app in the dark corner of his mind.
“Sex ‘bots can’t think so deeply,” said Noa. Her for-now hazel eyes scanned the crowd. “I can’t find Gunny’s signal. Where the hell is he?” Under her breath, she muttered, “I hope Manuel has that time band fixed ... Gunny, Gunny, where are you?”
All his frustration with being in the red light district, searching for Gunny, and her adherence to duty bubbled over. “Are we all just slaves to our programming?” James asked. “You can’t leave Gunny behind because of your Fleet training, and isn’t that just programming?”
Noa stopped short and turned to face him. Her now hazel eyes narrowed. “Blue ooze of stagnant algae, James! I don’t have time for a discussion of free will right now.”
James blinked.
“And damn it, even if I did have time, I wouldn’t discuss it! I’m going to save Gunny’s hide because if I don’t, I’ll feel like a lizzar dung weevil from now until eternity—whether that is because of free will or not doesn’t matter a boson bit!”
On James’s shoulder, Carl Sagan sneezed and then leaped over to Noa. Catching him and hoisting him up, she pivoted on her heel, illusory hair swirling, and resumed walking down the street, muttering, “Maybe we need to just ask someone.” James started to follow, but a party of patrons tumbling out of a doorway cut him off. For a moment he couldn’t see Noa over their heads. When the way was finally clear, he still couldn’t see her. He spun in place, scanning the crowds. He had the same feeling blooming along his spine as he had when Noa and he had been suspended above the Xinshii gorge, when he’d been certain he was about to die. And then he realized he was looking directly at the sleek brown bob of Ghost’s holographic projection. Noa was talking with a bouncer just outside a heavy metal door beneath a red neon sign of fizzing drinks clinking together. Her words were lost in the blur of sound in the cavern. James focused on the movement of her lips and was just able to make out, “Owes me S-rations
, from that Luddy-ship … fifties, beer gut, wearing those generic looking togs …”
The man’s lips moved as he looked Noa up and down. He slid a little too close to her. James’s jaw shifted and his skin heated. He prowled closer and could hear her words.
“Yeah, pretty boring,” Noa said, picking at the loose trousers. “But clean, and hardly worn. I got ‘em from a woman who’d traded with the Luddies for ‘em.” The man said something James couldn’t quite hear. Noa nodded and looked back at James. Her mind sparked across the Ark’s ether, and he let her in. As they connected, it felt like realizing he was still alive at the bottom of the Xinshii Gorge.
“Stay back,” Noa said across the ether. “Don’t make it look like we’re together. I’ll give you the signal when I want you to come in.” And then she stepped through the heavy door and into the establishment.
Irritation flared under his skin. Her thoughts shouldn’t make him feel like he’d been saved.
“I’m in,” Noa said across the ether. “They took my weapons, but I think I see him at the bar. Come in and cover me.”
Despite his irritation, he replied automatically, “On my way.”
Just before he reached the door, the bouncer put a hand on his chest. “You don’t go in without Libertas Credits or rations,” he said.
James’s jaw shifted. “You just let that woman in free.”
The man shrugged. “Beautiful women get in free.” He leaned in closer to James and said, “Now, if you don’t have payment, there is a place down the street and around the corner where a guy can—”
James pulled an S-ration out of his pocket. He had plenty more slung over his back, but upon seeing just the one the man’s eyes widened. “Go in.”
Stepping around the bouncer, James opened the door. It was heavy enough to deflect phaser fire or withstand the pressure of a vacuum, he noted. A rush of cold air hit him and he paused. No, the air was not cold, an internal app informed him; it was just slightly below room temperature. Still, it felt chilly and uncomfortable. The establishment was darker than the street had been. He was blinded by the change in brightness, but he stumbled forward, not wanting to stand blinking like an idiot. The door slammed behind him and a man said, “Halt! All weapons out.”
Across the ether, James heard Noa say, “Damn! This isn’t Gunny! Let’s go.”
James blinked and tried to see. He got the impression of being on a small landing at the top of some stairs. It was quieter than outside. He heard a beep and a whine beside him, and the shuffle of two sets of feet.
“I’m just leaving,” he said.
“Don’t move!” said a voice close to his right ear. He felt the barrel of a phaser or a stunner press against his ribs. He’d enjoy a stun, but a plasma pistol worked by cutting through skin and melting flesh. Would he only be damaged? Or would it end him?
With deft hands the other man reached into his pockets and pulled out his stunner, phaser, and a knife. He heard a bolt click in the door, and the skin on the back of his neck erupted in static. His vision finally came into focus. He was in a bar. Noa was down a short flight of steps backing away from a man, barely still on his stool, passed out cold and slouched at a counter made from polished asteroid rock. Shaking her head, she turned, and someone at the bottom of the steps stepped over to her, blocking her exit. “Can I buy you a drink?” James heard the man say. The man was turning a lighter over and over in his hand. From a doorway behind the bar, two new men stepped out and began walking toward the landing James was on. James focused on them, willing himself to hear if they were using the ether. Static erupted in his ears, lights flashed behind his eyes, and then he heard one of the men beside him say, “We have got at least six months’ worth of S-rations in augments here.”
“Let’s take him to the back,” the second man beside him thought.
One of the two men entering from the rear was hanging back. He looked older than the others; though he was physically fit, his hair was graying. His gray hair made his blue eyes brighter in his Eurasian features.
“Don’t feel bad, Reggie,” the first one’s thoughts snapped. “Scanner says this one is more machine than man.”
“But then he might not live if we take his augments,” Reggie, the older man, replied across the ether.
The first man’s thoughts practically hissed, “Do you want your kids to starve?” A vision of emaciated children with stringy hair and dirty clothes slid into James’s thoughts.
Reggie stood taller, and his jaw hardened.
“Move!” the man holding the pistol to his back said. James had been listening in with a sort of anthropological fascination, but the words snapped him from his daze. He didn’t budge.
“Noa,” he called across the ether.
She looked over the shoulder of the man flicking the lighter, her brow creasing between those eerily hazel eyes, her bobbed hair swinging. “What’s going on?” she asked aloud. Carl Sagan squeaked on her shoulder.
“Come on, you,” the second man beside James growled. “Move it!”
James had been reading thoughts for days, but he hadn’t tried to control them. In desperation, he reached out to Reggie’s channel, and the channel of the man beside him. Maybe he could project a distracting memory, or threaten them?
The man beside him hissed across the ether, “Damn bugs in Adam’s Station's ether—don’t open up to any unrecognized signals.”
“Yeah, Boss,” said the large man beside Reggie.
James felt a disorientating sensation, like he’d expected that. Somehow he’d known that he could listen, but he couldn’t control. And it made sense; he only heard thoughts transferred across the ethernet. He couldn’t access people’s apps as they were using them—and surely they were using them all the time.
“Do you know him?” the man with the lighter asked Noa. She looked like she was about to step forward but then stopped.
James stood stock still. Jamming the pistol into his ribs, the man on the landing whispered, “Don’t make this more difficult for yourself.”
The apparition that was Noa in disguise scowled at James. Turning away and slipping her hands into her pockets, she said, “I’ve met him before, but we aren’t friends.”
“What?” James said. His vision darkened. He stumbled down the stairs at the barest nudge from the man on the landing. His head ticked in a spasm.
Pulling out a handmade-looking cigarette, Noa didn’t look up at James. To the man next to her, Noa said, “We met a few weeks ago. He bought me a drink. We had some fun. But, whatever—” James caught a whiff of root. Shrugging casually, Noa reached into her pocket. “Damn, no lighter,” she said. Carl Sagan looked at James curiously but didn’t budge. His head ticked again.
“Keep moving,” the man with the pistol said to James. He didn’t.
Noa’s voice cut through the darkness. “It’s nothing personal, James.” His vision swam with Ghost’s holographic projection, and it was like he was sinking into deep water. From somewhere off in the distance he heard her say, “I’ll share this with you if you give me a light, Mister.”
James’s legs went limp beneath him, he felt as though every flare of light and thought were being drawn from him through some painful siphon, he fell forward, pain split his temple, and then the world went black.
Chapter Nine
Noa heard a thud that might have been James hitting the floor. She hadn’t heard a stunner go off—what had happened to him? She managed not to look, but she couldn’t help her hands from shaking, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She inhaled through her nose and held it, keeping her eyes on the man in front of her, his root-stained fingertips raising the lighter … the lighter that was a little too large, a little too wide, a little too long, and was protected by a polyfiber cover. She was intensely aware of the six men in the bar—the one she’d taken for Gunny from afar, the two near James, the two that had come from the back, the man in front of her, and she was also intensely aware of every
centi of distance between her and her weapons on the table by the door. The man in front of her didn’t appear to be armed, but his companions obviously were. She’d smelled root on him as soon as he stepped within a meter of her and revealed the tell-tale slight brown stain on his lips. The loose root and rolling paper she’d found in the pocket of the tick’s mercenary earlier was just a lucky accident.
Noa leaned forward, holding her hand-wrapped cig lightly between her fingers. Her hand trembled slightly, but she hoped it was mistaken for addiction … not her desire to look at James, to make a break for the weapons, and to shoot someone who desperately deserved it. The man’s own hands started to shake in anticipation of the shared root. Just a little closer …
The man flicked the lighter and slid it beneath the cig. Noa slipped her hand down his wrist, as though steadying his hand, or maybe being a klutzy flirt. She heard someone by James curse, footsteps, and the sound of his body being dragged across the floor. The cig lit. At the same time her fingers found the pressure point at the lighter owner’s radius bone. She pressed with every ounce of force she had. He cried in shock as his fingers unwound from the lighter. Noa’s free hand caught it, and she spit out the cig. Instead of reaching for his lighter, the addict dropped to his heels to pick up the cigarette.
“What’s going on?” one of his friends said.
Noa swung around the addict, his lighter in her hand. She flipped it around and breathed a silent prayer when she felt the button on the bottom edge.
She heard, rather than saw, the man lugging James running toward her, and one of the men coming from the back approaching with slow, heavy, unworried steps. She depressed the button and the lighter’s “cover” inverted, creating a shield around her hand as a hot blade slid into existence. Only about ten centis long, the “blade” was made of a flimsy alloy that could be compressed into small spaces—perfect for hiding in innocuous objects—but useless if it weren’t for the plasma that flared down its edge, hot enough to melt through skin like butter—hence the need for the lighter cover inverted to protect her hand. Grasping the addict’s collar from behind and holding the blade centis from his throat, Noa shouted, “Stop.”
