Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  Moses glanced at the covers. “Uh huh… uh huh… Yeah, Moby Dick, old Moses has read that one… Okay, The Stars My Destiny, overblown title but a great yarn anyway… Here! I definitely have not read this one!”

  The book was called Venus Confidential, and seemed to be some sort of guide to all the sinful things you could get up to on the towers of Venus if only you had a way to get there. The cover showed a picture of a half-naked woman, posing somewhat like the Venus de Milo, standing in the window of a Venusian living tower. “Material for a thousand sermons! Okay, I’ll take you. Follow me in your boat. I’ll get my own.”

  He took the book, and I turned to Bray with a quizzical expression. “What are you doing with all those books?”

  “What, I can’t enjoy reading?” He smiled, then dropped the rest of the books back into the backpack. “There are readers everywhere, Tycho. Books are good for barter, especially in out of the way places where they’re hard to come by.”

  Moses puttered out, and we followed him in our stolen boat. He took us straight down Washington, a street that had once been a glamorous shopping district. We passed shoe stores and handbag stores, dress shops and jewelry shops. The street started rising, and the waters became shallower. We pulled the boats up on dry land where Washington St. met Bonham Blvd.

  “The Jungle’s up here, everything between Bonham and the start of the Waste. That’s where I saw the android wandering around looking at the stars one night. I tried to preach him some hellfire, but he told me he had left his soul behind. Damned if I know what he meant by that.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s the Waste?”

  “You know, the spot where the Disaster happened. You’ll know it if you see it; it’s all flattened out and nothing grows there. Don’t even set foot in it; there’s evil in the air over there. Now come on, let’s go. I’ll show you where I saw the android.”

  He started walking, and from the look of the buildings I soon realized that we were walking through what was once the college district. For whatever reason, this neighborhood was more overgrown than all the others. We crawled through clinging vines and pushed through undergrowth, steering our way through what had originally been cobblestoned streets and the shells of broken buildings with marble columns. Every step was a struggle, and I realized why people didn’t usually come here. It wasn’t worth the effort.

  As we passed between a gap in a shattered brick wall, something huge and brown suddenly jumped up from the floor. I saw that it was a Grizzly bear, but only just in time. It took one look at us, decided it didn’t like the look of things, and ambled off. Moses stared at it as it crashed away, breaking branches and dragging leaves behind it.

  “That’s it for me. I’m going back to my boat.” He looked up at the sky, imploring an angry yet not unreasonable God. “Don’t send any more signs, Lord! Old Moses can take a hint.”

  “What is this crap?” Bray snarled. “We gave you your book!”

  “A book is one thing. A bear is another.”

  Bray didn’t have an answer to this flawless piece of logic, so all he could do was glare at Moses till the street preacher was gone. As the man’s back disappeared from view behind a building, Bray threw his hands up in frustration. “Okay. So, now what?”

  Andrea pointed straight ahead. “He’s in there somewhere.”

  “Somewhere in the Jungle. That’s what they call it. The most overgrown section of the whole damn city. We’ll never find him!”

  Andrea rolled her eyes. “You know, for a big guy—”

  “Don’t say it, chief! You promised not to say it!”

  “If you don’t do it, I won’t say it.” She smiled sweetly. “Now, come on. We’re making a lot of noise, so my guess is he’ll hear us coming.”

  “He’ll hear us coming and disappear.”

  “Not necessarily. He could hear us coming and shoot us from an ambush.”

  We kept on going, clawing our way through dense undergrowth and thick green vines. I wondered what it was that made the Jungle so verdant, even more so than the rest of the Exclusion Zone. It was right next to the Waste, the immediate area of the original accident. Based on satellite images, the Waste was exactly what the name implied. A flat plain of melted plasticrete that had cooled and hardened; a featureless wasteland.

  It didn’t seem likely that anything could live there. Bizarrely enough, though, there was known to be a single building in the heart of the Waste. People called it the Facility, as in the facility where the accident had actually happened. It was an early attempt to open a boson aperture, allowing for convenient travel across the unimaginable distances of the solar system.

  Exactly what had gone wrong was still a secret, and some people claimed that no one knew. The aperture had opened unexpectedly, breaching containment and spilling over. There had been an explosion, and the streets had melted, but the building where the explosion had happened was left untouched. It simply made no sense, and in the absence of any acceptable explanation people were free to speculate and free to mythologize. Even now, the inhabitants of the lost city seemed to keep their distance from it.

  I didn’t know why, but I had the feeling we were being pulled, that the Facility was like a magnet drawing the three of us to it. So I wasn’t immune; I was just as prone to mythologizing as anyone else.

  Be that as it may, we came to the edge of the Jungle with surprising suddenness. One moment we were struggling, forcing our way through thorns and branches. The next moment we were through and looking out across the flat expanse of colorless plasticrete the locals knew as the Waste. It appeared lonely and desolate, but less so than the windowless structure that loomed over it. Its dome was broken, cracked open like a gigantic eggshell, but its walls stood solid and silent.

  I pointed across the Waste. “That’s the Facility.”

  Andrea agreed with me. “I think you’re right. It’s always hard to compare a satellite image to what you see on the ground, but yes that’s what it looks like.”

  “I’m not going over there.” Jonathan Bray sat down and rested his body against the shell of a building.

  “It isn’t a haunted house.” From the look on her face, Andrea wasn’t so sure of that herself. The Waste wasn’t just made of melted plasticrete, but of everything that had been in the vicinity when the accident happened, including people. I don’t believe in ghosts, but if there was ever a place with a right to be haunted, it was that featureless plain.

  “He wouldn’t be over there anyway.” Bray sounded almost aggressive, like he was trying to make us believe him. “Moses saw him in the Jungle; he never said anything about seeing him in the Waste.”

  I pointed at the ground, where a set of muddy footprints was faintly visible. “He’s in there, Bray. His tracks lead straight to it.”

  “Shit. Come on, boss. Don’t make me do this.”

  Andrea’s voice got hard, but I noticed that she used his first name—showing a hint of empathy. “This is the job, Jonathan. Now get it done.”

  “I’ll follow orders. You know me. But just stop and think. Of every spot in the city, the radiation levels must be the highest there. Will those pills protect us?”

  “We won’t be there long. And even if the pills aren’t enough to protect us, the job is still the job.” She turned to me. “You’re a friend of the family, but you haven’t joined us. You don’t have to come. You can wait here in the Jungle till we return.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t come this far to sit on the sidelines.”

  The truth was simpler than that, and much more bleak. I just didn’t care. I hadn’t found a way to come to terms with Sophie yet, never mind the sudden loss of my career or becoming a wanted killer. No matter what happened, I just couldn’t see how it even mattered.

  “Good man.” She turned away and started the walk across the empty Waste. Bray grimaced weakly, like he wanted to throw up but was holding it back. He looked at me, said, “after you,” and gestured for me to go ahead of
him. I followed Andrea, walking in the footsteps of the mysterious android.

  When we reached the doors, Andrea pointed at something coiled up on the ground. It was a broken chain, evidence that someone had entered the building.

  Bray shook his head. “Okay, so he’s in there.”

  The door opened a crack. “Don’t come in here. Not unless you no longer value your lives.”

  “We’re not here to fight you,” Andrea replied.

  “Who said anything about fighting? You’re an OI. The radiation levels here would be sure to kill you.”

  OI was short for Organic Intelligence, a term used by some AIs.

  “We’re looking for someone.” Andrea paused, waiting for the android to make some reply. She didn’t tell him we were looking for him.

  He sighed. “You found who you’re looking for. I’m Julian Huxley.”

  21

  Andrea was incredulous. “You’re Julian Huxley?”

  I took it a little further than that. “You’re full of it.”

  “What were you expecting?” asked the voice behind the door. “Something more human? Or perhaps less?”

  “We can’t even see you,” snarled Bray. “We don’t know what to expect.”

  “If I step out, you’ll kill me the second I show my face. That’s why I’m in here. Still, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone would find me.”

  “We’re not your enemy.” Andrea’s voice was soothing, to the extent that she was capable of a soothing voice. “We’re here to bring you in. You’ll be treated fairly, with due legal process…”

  “It will lead to the same end no matter what you do, no matter who you represent, no matter what you think you know.”

  “Your enemy sounds powerful.” Andrea was stringing him along, trying to figure out what would work.

  “You have no idea. My enemy is a ravenous cancer at the heart of the Federation.”

  “He’s got a way with words. For a droid,” Bray muttered.

  Andrea switched to a skeptical tone. “We have access to high-level intelligence. Top secret and beyond. Are you claiming to know something we don’t?”

  “Quite simply? Yes.”

  “Okay. So, how do you know all this?”

  “I know this because I was once a part of that sickness, but my new form has given me a clarity of vision I could never have had in all my lives as a man of flesh and blood. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you become… dispassionate.”

  That hit me hard. It reminded me of the Eleven. Once we had fought our way up to the top floor of Tower 7 on Venus, we still had to fight the last surviving members of August Marcenn’s Nightwatch. They called themselves the Eleven, and they spoke and acted as if they were a single person. United by August Marcenn’s broken mind, they insisted their true purpose was to fight, “Insidious powers, old and dispassionate.”

  I stepped forward a little. In the distance, I heard a single shot. Andrea heard it too, because she glanced in the direction of the Jungle. But I had a question to ask, and no reason to think the shot had anything to do with us.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “What do I mean by what?”

  “What did you mean by that phrase, that bit about being old and dispassionate? All my lives as a man of flesh and blood, or whatever it was you said?”

  “You don’t know?”

  The door opened a little more, and I caught my first glimpse of the android claiming to be Julian Huxley. His face looked human, or nearly so, but grafted onto a robotic body. His eyes were wary, and something about them seemed old and melancholy. Not just old, though. More like ancient, but I don’t know how an android’s eyes could even express that.

  “I really don’t know.” I shook my head.

  “I’m not Julian Huxley. I never was.”

  “Of course not. You’re an android. Klein did tell us that he did something with an AI, something experimental—”

  “You misunderstand. I am Julian Huxley, in the sense in which you mean that phrase. I have his mind, his thoughts, his memories… but not only his. Like Baudelaire once said, I have more memories than if I had lived for a thousand years.”

  “Baudelaire?” I asked, confused.

  “French poet,” said Bray. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Why do you have so many memories, robot boy?”

  Huxley, if that’s who this was, ignored the insult. “Because I was born Pyotr Vasily Vasiliev in the north of what is today the Russo-Sino Territories on November 9, 2015.”

  I shook my head. “No, you weren’t. This is some kind of glitch. Come back with us and we’ll get you fixed up. You’ll stop believing you’re someone else.”

  “Someone else is all I am. All I’ve been, for so many centuries. When Pyotr died, I established my consciousness in another body. When that body died, I did it again. Since the death of the Vasiliev body, I’ve lived 14 lives, imprinting my mind in a new body as each succumbed to sickness and old age. Julian Huxley is the last in nearly a millennium of lives.”

  I couldn’t get away from it. Starting on Venus, I was constantly being confronted with claims of immortality. It still repulsed me, and I had to resist the urge to shudder. “This is vaguely entertaining, but I liked it better when you were claiming to be Julian Huxley.”

  “I assure you, nothing I’m saying is meant to be humorous. In ancient India, the doctrine of reincarnation led to a deep sense of weariness, of the meaningless nature of human striving. If life never truly ends, then every new birth is merely a return to suffering. The same road you’ve already walked, with no destination and no way off. That’s what led to Vedanta, Buddhism, and all such philosophies. It was much the same for me, but not as a mere religious doctrine. As a lived reality, a dreary and repetitive round. A revolving wheel, grinding me slowly in its relentless turning.”

  Bray shook his head, impressed again by Huxley’s way with words. I saw it more as a sales pitch, the empty claims of a professional con artist. “Come on, just admit it. You’re a glitchy A.I. in an android body, not a Russian man from 2015.”

  “A Russian man? I no longer claim to be a Russian man. I have those memories, but I can no longer feel them. I have lived too long, or at least I thought so.”

  “You’re talking in riddles,” said Andrea. “Do you want us to understand you, or do you just want to sound as obscure as possible?”

  “How much clearer can I be?” The android stepped forward, pushing the door completely open. “In 2015, I was born in what was then the Russian Federation. My name at that time was Pyotr Vasily Vasiliev—”

  “We heard all that,” I said. “Tell us something new.”

  “I am trying to. As I said, I came to feel that life was more of a burden than a blessing. I grew weary of the flesh, its frailty and transience. Like the great spiritual teachers, I was searching for a way to escape the limits of biology. I found it in the work of Lucien Klein.”

  Bray scoffed. “The work of Lucien Klein is to be an absolute prick who ought to be beaten up on a constant basis.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “But he’s just a manager. If what you say is true, then what could a man like that possibly have to offer you?”

  “You are wrong about Klein. He’s much more than just a manager. He has a certain sense of vision, and the managerial skills to recruit those who can do what he cannot. No, I stand by my words. The work of Lucien Klein.”

  “So, what about it? How could he help you to transcend the flesh?”

  “You haven’t interrogated him?”

  We had, of course. Klein had told us that Huxley was suffering from motor neuron disease, an untreatable condition without a full-body prosthesis. To overcome his illness, he had volunteered to be a human test subject for Klein’s Generative A.I. research. By mapping his memories and his personality, they were able to effectively transfer Huxley’s consciousness to an A.I. According to Klein, this had made him the first “intrinsic immortal” in human histor
y.

  “He told us,” I said. “But we didn’t believe what he told us.”

  “Don’t take it personally,” said Andrea. “We never believe anything without hard evidence.”

  On the other hand, it did provide a connection between the Huxley case and the Misha Orlow killing. If this android was who he said he was, then Huxley had been staying with Misha Orlow.

  “What were you doing in Sif?” I asked.

  The android looked down. The sadness I perceived in it seemed to deepen. “Only now, as a being of pure data, can I understand what I lost by abandoning a mortal body. Only now can I truly comprehend what it is to be human.”

  I waited. The android looked up, trying to make eye contact. “Do you know what happened on Venus? In Tower 7?”

  “Do I know what happened? I was the—”

  Andrea interrupted. “We know what happened.”

  “But do you know the true story? Yes… I think you do. I think you know what was not revealed. So, you know about the Continuity, August Marcenn’s failed attempt to disperse his consciousness across multiple bodies.”

  Andrea seemed reluctant to say. This was information, and the last thing she was inclined to do was to give up information. At last she nodded. The android already knew, and it wouldn’t talk to us unless we talked to it.

  “What you may not understand, is that Marcenn’s attempt was not the true Continuity. It was a failed imitation. The same is true of Marcenn’s Eleven. A pale reflection of the real Eleven.”

  I shivered involuntarily. Marcenn’s Eleven had been an abomination. Broken pieces of a single mind, still moving in tandem but fundamentally alien. The thought that there was another one…

  I couldn’t help it. I was starting to accept the possibility that this was more than an especially clever A.I. I was beginning to believe that this whole thing was real.

  “Okay,” I said. “So, what happened in Sif? Who is after you and what do they want? What was your connection to Misha Orlow?”

  “Misha Orlow was my son.”