Lightless

by C. A. Higgins

  “Matthew Gale,” Althea typed in the hope of deception.

  LIAR.

  Althea groaned.

  That was how Domitian found her an hour or so later, still furiously in interrogation with the computer.

  “How is it?” he asked.

  “I need a blowtorch,” Althea said. “One of the magnesium ones. And some thermite.”

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  Domitian had not been arguing with a computer in English for the past hour and a half. Conversations with a computer should rightfully take place in code, and here Althea had been stuck trying to match wits with Ivanov’s damn machine.

  “Look,” she said. A small part of her thought that perhaps if she could express her frustrations properly to Domitian, he would bring them to Ida Stays in such a way that Ida would appreciate them. “It’s got this shell,” she said, spreading out a dome with her hands as if she could shape a physical thing out of metaphor. “Whatever’s inside the shell—the good stuff, the code—I can’t get at, because the shell, I can’t get through it.”

  Domitian came to sit in the copilot’s chair beside her, leaning his elbows on his knees and frowning. He looked overlarge in the cozy, well-lived feeling of the room, and Althea had a sudden strange thought that Ivanov and Gale had sat where she and Domitian were sitting now many times before and planned thefts, sabotage—perhaps they had even simply talked, like friends did.

  “So it’s got a firewall,” Domitian said.

  Althea winced. “A wall, you can get around,” she said, feeling the metaphor slipping from her fingers and clinging grimly to it. “It’s a shell. Because it’s how the whole computer is reacting to me. They’ve changed it somehow. Gale and Ivanov programmed it somehow so that it doesn’t react like a computer. It reacts like a person.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means…it has an agenda, it doesn’t give you a perfectly truthful response,” said Althea. “It means it’s not logical. I can’t get through.”

  Domitian leaned over and peered down onto the screen Althea had been working on. “This looks like a chat.”

  Althea rubbed her palms over her face. “That’s because it is a chat,” she said. “The computer won’t interact with me any other way, and there’s no way around it. Like I said, a shell.” She dropped her hands and relented. “Okay, it’s not really a person, and once I get past this shell—once I get into the heart of it—it’ll be a computer again. They didn’t change anything innate in the computer system itself; they just wrote a program.” A very good program, but Althea wasn’t going to admit that. “It’s just that I can’t get past this stupid first layer.”

  “Because it’s not like a computer,” Domitian said. He was smiling faintly.

  “What’s so funny?”

  He turned that faint smile on her, looking at her with some fondness, and sidestepped the question. “It’s a clever idea,” he said. “Make it so that the only way to hack their computer has nothing to do with computers.”

  Althea scowled at the implicit praise for Gale and Ivanov. “Don’t.”

  He straightened up. “I know you’ll be able to do it, Althea,” he said, standing and clapping her on the shoulder on his way to the door.

  “Yeah,” Althea muttered, and typed, “Let me in.”

  NO, replied the machine.

  She knew without looking that Domitian had paused at the door, not taking the step down into the Annwn’s sideways hall. She knew that he was waiting for her to speak again.

  Somehow, Domitian’s expectations always managed to get something out of her even if she hadn’t intended to give him anything at all.

  “What if I can’t?” she said, and typed, “Please.”

  TELL ME YOUR NAME, demanded the Annwn.

  “You will,” Domitian said. Solid, certain.

  “What if I can’t and I spend all this time here working on this stupid, useless piece of crap, and while I’m here, the Ananke gets worse and gets ruined?”

  Silence. TELL ME YOUR NAME remained unanswered.

  “Althea,” said Domitian, and at the tone in his voice Althea had to suppress the childhood urge to sink low in her seat, “I know that you are worried about the Ananke. But allowing your concern for the Ananke to seriously impede your attempts to investigate—”

  “I’m not letting it impede anything,” said Althea over Domitian’s words, but he said, “Yes, you are. I expect you to put the same amount of effort into cracking the Annwn as you would toward—”

  “Aren’t you worried about the Ananke?”

  Domitian paused. “The state of the computer is of concern to me.”

  That hadn’t been what Althea had meant at all. She wanted to ask again, to ask if he was worried about their ship, but she was afraid that he would not understand. Wearily, one-fingered, she typed “Ivanov” in response to the computer’s query.

  “Miss Stays will be gone soon,” said Domitian, his voice low and his presence heavy on her back. “Until then, you must do your best to obey.”

  Althea’s finger hovered over the enter key, then she stopped on a thought.

  She went back twice and changed “Ivanov” to “Ivan.”

  “Did you hear me?”

  Enter.

  “Althea.”

  LIAR, said the Annwn.

  And Althea, full of frustration, typed out “True.”

  She thought it wouldn’t do anything at all. The Annwn would know that she wasn’t Ivanov or Gale and would return to resistance.

  But to her astonishment, the ship said, HELLO, IVAN. VERIFICATION METHODS ARE ALL CURRENTLY OFFLINE. MINIMAL ACCESS GRANTED.

  “Holy shit,” said Althea.

  She hardly noticed Domitian moving until he was standing right beside her. “Did you break it?” he asked.

  Althea could not stop her grin. It grew slowly over her face until she thought it might break her in half. “I did. Well, sort of,” she amended. “I don’t think I can get any farther in without connecting the computer back to the ship, and that’s too risky, I won’t do that, and I’ve got System regs on my side. But I got it open a crack.”

  The Annwn waited patiently for her input, as a good computer should. She flexed her fingers and thought. “Let’s see what it’ll give me.”

  “Access navigation logs,” she typed.

  YOU DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY AUTHORIZATION.

  “Access personal files: Ivanov, Leontios.”

  YOU DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY AUTHORIZATION.

  “Access personal files: Ivan.”

  YOU DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY AUTHORIZATION.

  “Well,” said Althea, “there goes that.”

  “See if you can get the communication logs,” Domitian said.

  “Access communication logs.”

  YOU DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY AUTHORIZATION.

  “What the hell can I access, then?” Althea demanded of the computer. She tried to get cute. “Display available data.”

  SPECIFY, said the Annwn.

  “Bitch,” Althea muttered.

  “What would they use this for?” asked Domitian, jarring her. Althea had nearly forgotten he was there, so quickly had she zeroed in on the machine, and her first reaction was to tense up at the intrusive sound of his voice. “The computer is only offering some functionality, yes? What’s the purpose of that?”

  “In case something goes wrong they can still use the computer,” Althea said. “It’s a contingency plan. They’re well prepared; they’ve got lots of plans.” Or they’d had lots of plans. Gale was dead. It was an uncomfortable thought; Althea returned her attention to the machine.

  If this functionality—when the computer was all but destroyed—existed, it must mean that only the most important files or programs could be accessed from it in case of emergency. Probably also the least incriminating, Althea thought. Ida Stays would not be pleased.

  “Show available programs.”

  NONE AVAILABLE.

&
nbsp; Althea pressed her fingers into her eyes and breathed. This was a problem she might be able to solve; she needed the name of the variable. Gale and Ivanov would have named it something sensible, something easy to remember—they would use the computer in this state only if something had gone badly wrong.

  Althea felt a little bit like Ida Stays trying to think like this. It was not a pleasant sensation. But Althea knew what she would call the variable if she were the one naming it.

  She typed, “Show workspace.”

  FIVE FILES AVAILABLE.

  Althea grinned.

  The first file was a data bomb; if let into another computer, it would erase every piece of data on board and leave the computer hollowed out and useless. It was not sophisticated enough to have wiped the mind of the Ananke, but it sent a chill down Althea’s spine nonetheless. The second and third were both viruses designed to slip into the veins of a computer and force it to obey, poisoning it slowly to death. Althea could tell at a glance, to her disappointment, that neither was the one that had been put into the Ananke. The virus in the Ananke was insidious but random. These two were targeted and simple.

  The next was a program designed to go into a System computer and affect the cameras in some way. Ivanov and Gale had used the System’s facial recognition against it: the cameras would see Ivanov and Gale, and the sight of the two men would trigger a reaction in the computer that saw them. A modified version of that program must have been what the men had used to get on board the Ananke without the Ananke reporting it; when the Ananke recognized them, it knew not to sound the alarm.

  Of course, the Ananke might have been programmed to react differently to seeing their faces, Althea thought. The Ananke could be programmed specifically to sound the alarm at the sight of either of the men. Or she could be programmed to execute some other action: erase a piece of data, detonate a bomb. Ivanov’s very presence on board could still be affecting the computer, and his removal from the ship could provoke some other change.

  The last of the five programs, the five programs that Gale and Ivanov considered the most important programs for them to have in case of an emergency, as far as Althea could tell, was a sequence of triggers for the detonation of a network of bombs.

  —

  “You met Constance through Mattie, of course,” said Ida.

  “Now you want to talk about Mattie,” Ivan said, as if saying, “See? I know what you’re doing.”

  Ida wanted him to know. “How did you meet Mattie?”

  Ivan’s eyes were bright. He had slid somehow back into confidence. “That’s a funny story, actually,” he said, and Ida wondered if it was the thought of Matthew Gale that had given him strength or the idea that he had a story to tell.

  “It was a few months after I left home,” Ivan said, leaning forward with a confiding smirk that almost distracted her from the shadows beneath his eyes. “I was running out of the cash I’d taken from my account.”

  Taken from his account, stolen from his mother; it was a matter of perspective. Ida kept her opinion to herself.

  “I was trying out some petty little cons to keep myself afloat,” Ivan said. “Just for a little longer. When I met Mattie, I was on Mars—”

  “What had you intended to do when you ran out of money?” Ida asked.

  “Nothing,” said Ivan. “I didn’t think about it.”

  She understood. He hadn’t meant to survive very long.

  “I was on Mars when I met Mattie,” Ivan continued, passing on as if the question had not been significant, “hustling pool, because I liked the idea of con man tradition. Pool’s easy, anyway; it’s just physics. I was doing pretty well, I thought, but Mattie saw through me.”

  “One con man recognizes another,” said Ida.

  “Exactly,” he said, and smiled. “Anyway, Mattie was impressed…” Ivan laughed and started again. “Impressed by something, anyway. He came over to chat me up, but I realized pretty quickly that he’d noticed what I was doing and found out that what he wanted was to team up.”

  “Just like that?”

  “He had a particular heist in mind,” said Ivan. “And he’d been looking for a good partner. Mattie’s got a lot of talent, but his words-to-mouth program is faulty. If he needs to think on his feet, he better be using his feet and not trying to talk his way out of anything.”

  All of this was only feeding Ida’s frustration that Gale had been allowed to escape before she arrived. And now he was dead, his corpse floating somewhere in interplanetary space, drifting slowly toward the sun, and she would never be able to interrogate him.

  “In the end,” Ivan said, “he talked me into it.”

  “Why did you agree?” Ida asked. “You didn’t know him. He was a stranger who came up to you and called you out for being a con man.”

  “He didn’t call me out,” said Ivan.

  “Tried to pick you up, then.”

  Ivan grinned. “He did try to pick me up,” he said. “Gave up on that pretty quickly, though.”

  “So why did you say yes?”

  Ivan seemed to think about it. After a moment, though, he shrugged. “I liked him.”

  “Why? You spoke to him for five minutes.”

  Ivan made a face. “I’m not that easy. He worked on me for longer than that.”

  “Why did you like him?”

  “Do you like anybody, Ida?” Ivan asked, and it was a strange enough question to make her briefly uneasy, but she rationalized that the strangeness of his question was simply a reaction to the way she had phrased hers.

  “Of course I do,” she said.

  “And could you say exactly why you like them?”

  “Of course,” said Ida. She kept logical little lists in her head, reasons to like a person, why they were useful in one column, reasons to dislike them in another.

  “Of course you do,” said Ivan drily, and Ida thought to ask him what precisely he meant by that but could not quite bring herself to ask, and Ivan continued. “I just did. He was interesting. He was entertaining. I had never pulled off a heist before, and here one had fallen into my lap. So I went with him.” He smiled again. “Turned out his instincts were right. We got along so well and worked together so well that we’ve kept working together ever since.”

  “Without any problems?” Ida asked, all polite doubt.

  “There are always problems,” said Ivan. “But Mattie’s easy to get along with. And he’s very useful—an incredible thief and a lot of connections. Criminal connections, Ida, not terrorist.”

  “I hadn’t even asked,” Ida said.

  “I could see that look in your eyes,” said Ivan. “You were going to. Mattie doesn’t have any terrorist connections, just a hell of a lot of criminal ones.”

  “Why wouldn’t he? It seems like terrorists could be useful people to know, if not to work with.”

  “You would think that,” Ivan said drily. “No. Mattie likes having fun. He likes taking a risk and getting out of it with his own skill. Terrorists aren’t fun. And Mattie is easygoing. He doesn’t have the kind of single-minded commitment to live for a cause like that. Besides,” he concluded with what seemed like genuine feeling, “terrorists kill, and Mattie’s not a murderer.”

  It was curious of him to forget, given that he was the one who had told Ida about it.

  “What about the Jason?” Ida asked, and watched his reaction closely.

  It gave him pause, at least.

  “That was different,” Ivan said. “Mattie’s life was in danger.”

  “From the entire crew?” Ida asked, amused. “You don’t think perhaps he might have stopped at one? Or two? Or three, or four? He needed to kill all sixty?”

  “He was injured and alone,” said Ivan. “He had one chance to escape, and it involved killing them all. He shut off the life support on most of the ship. Tell me, how was he supposed to instruct the vacuum to pick and choose?”

  Ivan was very serious. He meant it, Ida thought; he really meant it. Ida wondered how
he had reconciled that protective loyalty with his decision to abandon Mattie in the first place.

  “What do you have in common?” she asked with genuine curiosity. “A rich boy from Earth who ran away and a poor boy from Miranda?”

  Ivan said, “Companionship.”

  “Not a shared cause?” asked Ida.

  Ivan looked exasperated. “No.”

  “You’re very certain.”

  “We spend almost every minute of our time together,” said Ivan. “I know what he does and doesn’t do, who he knows and doesn’t know.”

  “And you’re never separated,” said Ida.

  “Except when we have to be for a job, or for a few hours for our sanity.”

  “And yet he left you now,” said Ida.

  Ivan swallowed. He said, “After the Jason and Europa—”

  “Europa was eight years ago,” Ida pointed out. “Surely the two of you—”

  “Europa established boundaries,” Ivan said, each word snapping out precise, heavily Terran. “Help each other when we can, but otherwise each puts himself first.”

  There was a logic to it that appealed to Ida. If she ever were to spend ten years of her life with someone, she would like to have the same rule established between them. But other people were not like her. Other people were weak, even Ivan. And she doubted that Matthew Gale had run because of a betrayal nearly a decade old that he seemed to have forgiven already, shortly after it happened, as he had returned to working with Ivan.

  “That seems rather cold to me,” said Ida, “for someone as friendly as Matthew Gale.” Ivan made a face at the word “friendly,” but Ida did not take it back. “Perhaps he left you because he had something better to do.”

  “Yeah,” said Ivan. “Live.”

  “Or perhaps he had better secrets to hide.”

  Ivan gave her a long, cold look, and this time did not deign to answer.

  Ida started to pace again behind the bars of her long-unused chair, listening to the sound of her heels ringing out throughout the room. “Tell me more about Mattie’s connections.”

  “Since they’re not relevant,” Ivan said, “I’d rather not turn a rat.”

  “You are a rat,” Ida said. “You and Gale both. You betrayed each other. I want to know about your connections. Did you often get jobs through Mattie’s friends?”