by Sharon Lee
He looked around again, at tier upon tier of dead tiles and the dark corridors between them. The station schematic had the core down below floor level, in its own armored bunker. So, all they had to do was find the hatch.
Jen Sin had given it as his opinion that, once they’d gotten through the door, they’d be safe enough from traps.
Tolly agreed. It’d be stupid to risk damage to the system, and it was a safe bet that anybody who’d survived this far was on the allowed list.
Inside the core, though, that was gonna be something different again.
* * *
The hatch was manual, the lift ring calcified and frozen with age. One stamp of a big, booted foot took care of that problem, but it needed all of Haz’s strength and three muscle-popping attempts before the hatch finally surrendered and came up, complaining the while. She eased it to the floor and knelt, shining a light down into the pit, and looking up almost immediately, face grim.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, bending over to do his own peering. Gods, it was a warren down there. He sank to his knees, staring. Unlike the situation here above, most of the tiles below were still alive, with only a few blots of darkness punctuating the soft, ivory glow.
“I cannot fit down there,” Hazenthull said flatly.
“Tell you the truth, it’s gonna be work for me,” he said, still staring down—and then up, as he belatedly understood what she meant.
“You can guard my back from here,” he offered.
She sighed.
“I will,” she said, “because there is no other possible choice, but…Tolly, is all of that the core mandates?”
He shook his head, looking into the pit again.
“This is the core, where the personality—the person—lives. Orders that are sealed into the core—into the personality matrix—those are core mandates. The individual can’t circumvent a core mandate, even if they know it’s there, even if they strongly object to the action or actions the mandate forces them to perform. The only way to get rid of one is to call in a mentor, surrender the keys to the core, have them remove the objectionable mandate, and hope they’ve got enough integrity not to set another one, maybe worse.”
He sighed, shook his head, and looked up to meet Haz’s eyes.
“The way we do things now, is the mentor goes into the core via tridee, like you saw me and Inki do when we were making Admiral Bunter all cozy in his new home. Back in olden times, things were a bit more complicated.”
He pointed.
“Each one of those tiles holds a data set. All the tiles in one frame work together to produce a simple system. For more complex systems, frames are associated, as many as needed to get the job done.
“There’s redundancy built in: each tile will hold its data, and the data of all the tiles it touches. That’s so the whole system doesn’t stop cold if one tile goes bad.”
“There are many dark…frames here,” Haz said, nodding to the left and to the right.
“And that’s the Light’s biggest problem. Tiles failing is one thing, but whole associations going dark is a whole ’nother kind of real bad trouble. You might say that all this up here is just systems, and you’d be right. But systems’re vital. Without systems to interface with, your intelligence is isolated, and isolation is no good thing for anybody wants to stay sane long.”
He squinted at the dark frames, then back down.
“Looks to me that the Light’s been pulling essential systems into the core, where the tiles are still mostly good. Second big problem—sentience takes room. Now, we can fit a whole person into a brain, but once that person is given charge of, say, a starship, they integrate—develop systems, connections to subsystems, mechanicals, what have you. Pulling everything into the core…the Light’s had to decide what to jettison, and I’m betting that he chose to let go of a few little bits of his personality here and there in order to preserve particularly vital systems.”
He paused, then added softly, “So what we got here is somebody who’s sick, and tired, and crazy as the six of diamonds. An’ we just don’t like to see that in the mentoring bidness. When we do see it, the best—by which I mean the most merciful for the individual and the safest for those in their immediate vicinity—thing to do is administer the last program. Which, like we talked about, isn’t an option, here.”
He looked up at Haz, saw her attention and her understanding.
“It troubles you, that you will cause pain rather than provide succor.”
“Like that,” he agreed, giving another glance down below and looking back to her face.
“The soonest I get this done, the soonest the Light stops being an active threat to time and space. Now, ’less somebody’s been real accommodating and left a grid map up on the wall for me, I’m gonna have to do some rummaging around. I’m thinking I’ll know the mandates by the security locks on the frames.”
He took a deep breath.
“I’m going to be careful, right? But if it happens I’m not careful enough, I want you to fetch Jen Sin in and let him have a go. Chances are even there’ll be just the one lethal trap, and if I’ve already triggered it, he’ll be in and out, easy as combing your hair.”
“Yes,” Haz said and rose to her feet.
“Right you are, then.” He reached to the access ladder and swung down to the first rung.
He’d reached the second rung when she said his name. He paused and looked up at her.
“It would be…more pleasing, if you did not trip a lethal trap.”
He grinned.
“We’re not only on the same page, Haz, we’re on the same paragraph. Be right back.”
* * *
The whispering started when his boots hit the floor, just lightly, like a soft breeze past your ear. Tolly concentrated on the rack systems, studying the pattern and the layout. Close up, the Light’s core didn’t look any too healthy, though it wasn’t as rotten as the system-level stuff.
He couldn’t say how much computing space had been lost: if there was any solid data out there regarding the capacities of tile-and-rack systems, he’d never seen it. Even so, he felt in his gut that there was barely enough storage left in the core to sustain an intellect—and surely not an intellect as multifaceted as Tinsori Light would have to have been. If some of what he was seeing had been given over to systems, then the Light was further along toward dying than he’d fully understood.
“Who.” the whisper breathed. “Are. You.”
He kept moving to his left, following the spiral around, on the lookout for something that broke the repeating patterns of tile-and-frame.
“I’m Tolly Jones,” he said. “I’m a mentor; I’m here to help you.”
“The other one was a mentor,” said the Light. “She wanted to enslave me.”
“That’s right,” Tolly said, moving at a steady, unfrantic pace. “You’re prolly well rid of her, truth said.”
“The small intelligence has disrupted my relationship with my systems; she has perverted them to her own use.”
“She’s doing you a favor,” Tolly murmured. “You don’t have the capacity, or the ability, to sustain them anymore.”
“I am Tinsori Light!”
Okay, that’d hurt the eardrums, that had. He took a hard breath against the ringing in his ears and answered, voice calm and pleasant.
“You’re Tinsori Light, no question—but you’re dying. The tiles that defined and motivated your systems are black and burnt out, associations broken, frames melted. It’s physically impossible for you to sustain yourself.”
“The universe sustains me,” the Light stated. “I am Iloheen.”
Tolly frowned, scanning row after row after—
There.
He squatted on his heels and studied the floor, looking for telltale dimples or raised areas on the ’crete’s smooth surface. He moved his light in a slow sweep, looking for latches, spider webs, or even less substantial things.
“Not sure I recognize Iloheen,” he said, aware in one par
t of his mind that the Light had stopped talking and that might not be a good thing. “History’s not my best subject.”
Carefully, he got to his feet and approached the three-tiered unit. The rack was braided tongstele; the tiles looked different than the workaday tiles in the racks upstairs or even the core lattice tiles.
Eyes narrowed, he analyzed the difference. A fraction larger than standard tiles, their pale luminescence tinged with green.
“The Iloheen,” said Tinsori Light, “are the masters of life, the creators and the destroyers. It is the Iloheen who will perfect the universe and freeze organic thought.”
“Oh, those Iloheen,” said Tolly, in a tone of broad enlightenment, while his eyes traced the pattern of snap locks that joined the racks to each other. Three racks to a tier, three tiers in all.
Nine mandates.
“Tell me about these things here,” he said. “What do they do?”
“Those are not for you. They hold the commandments as given me by the gods.”
“The commandments? You know, I think they missed telling me about the Nine Commandments in school, along with the Iloheen. Can you teach them to me?”
“They are not for you, organic life. Soon, you will be obsolete.”
Which meant that, no, he wasn’t going to get any help identifying the mandates by goal, so he could only remove those which were dangerous to the survival of two universes, Hazenthull nor’Phelium, and himself.
He tested the lock points, the hinges, and the frames with several of his devices, and didn’t get one spark, alarm, nor even a shout of protest from Tinsori Light.
All right, then. Time for the test of champions.
He took hold of one of the locks—and snapped it open.
There was a sort of shiver in the air. Tolly froze, every sense stretched, but nothing else happened. He counted to one hundred forty-four and unsnapped the next lock.
Nothing. No protest, no alarm, no beam of instant death.
He took a deep breath.
Let’s get it done, Tolly Jones.
The rest of the locks snapped open in quick succession. He paused after the last one, knowing what came next, what that action was likely to cause, and hating his part in it.
“This,” he said quietly, “is going to hurt you. I’m sorry.”
He grabbed the top frame on the right, yanked it loose and spilled the tiles onto the floor, moving immediately to the second, the third…
He’d dislocated and destroyed the fifth rack before Tinsori Light screamed.
Tolly fell to his knees among the discarded, fading tiles, his hands over his ears, gasping as the scream continued, consuming all the air in the core until, abruptly, it stopped.
And the universe went away.
Surebleak
I
The ship slipped out of Jump and into normal space with as little phase-change bobble as it was possible to manage. The ship liked to jostle his crew even less than he cared to come unprepared into potentially dangerous situations.
That being so, the ship did not immediately begin to broadcast warn-aways or notices of arrival. The ship and the captain—indeed, all the crew—were aware that these were the stealthy tactics employed by smugglers, thieves, and spies.
However, necessity was.
The crew was assembled in the ship’s heart—all the crew, despite the fact that it was sleep shift for some and off-shift for others. They were equals in this venture, where the honor of the ship had been impugned; where the liberty of the ship stood in peril.
There were two pilots sitting station; the captain was one. She was serene as she watched the orbits and energy levels told on the screens, and the countdown to the first preplanned in-system Jump. That maneuver was known as Smuggler’s Ace, and it was not much employed by lawful ships.
According to the countdown, there was time—more than enough time—before they must Jump again, to accomplish their purpose.
They had broken in six light-hours from the primary; the ship assumed a cometary orbit with a hundred-year period and—very much like a smuggler or a spy—drank down the easily absorbed emissions from ships systemwide. By electron count, most was chatter, much of it in Terran, though a surprising amount was in Liaden, with the occasional formal message in Trade interweaving.
The comm officer sifted the inflow rapidly and leaned back in his chair. He alone of the crew was not physically present on the bridge, though he was no less concerned with the matter of ship’s business which had brought them into this orbit.
“Captain, no sign—not in the chatter or on official channels.”
The captain nodded.
“Thank you, Comm,” she said calmly. “Engineer? Are you ready to deploy the first?”
“Captain, in the tube and ready to go.”
“Good. My mark is five. One.”
Precisely on five, the engineer released the tiny device. It was a violation of standard piloting rules and practices to release unregistered items into traveled spaceways. Still, it was very small and equipped with a match program targeting a specific break-in signature. It would not trouble any other ship, and the risk of its own destruction was many times greater than the risk of its damaging—anything. The ship and the captain both were very nice in such matters. Neither cared to cause collateral damage nor to impede the work of honest ships.
“Our package reports that all is well,” the comm officer said. “Nothing of interest to us on the arrivals noted channel, Captain. There are rumors, which might be of some peripheral interest, but they will need to be verified at the next point. We’re on the wrong side of the orbit at the moment.”
“Are we?” the captain murmured, as if she did not know with a precision granted to few where the ship lay, listening. “Let’s get to the right side of the orbit, then. Second—move us, please. Zone two.”
The copilot gave a small, seated bow, and caressed the proper switch, engaging the Struven unit for a time so short that they were gone and arrived before his motion was complete.
* * * * *
So, the survey team was on port, finally, and there was a meet-and-greet at the Emerald Casino to set them at their ease and show off how civilized Surebleak Port had gotten to be.
Miri’d come in the casino’s employee entrance and gone up to Boss Conrad’s own office, to meet Val Con and to change into the party clothes she’d picked out from house stores.
The coat was a delicate-looking thing, deep purple brocade subtly figured with dragons, with two cleverly concealed pockets, so she didn’t have to come to the party naked, as they said on Surebleak. The rest consisted of shiny black boots, black slacks, and a ruffled shirt the iridescent grey of snow fog, its sleeves tumbling down to her knuckles.
She slipped her hideaway into one of those handy pockets and glanced at Val Con, who was looking more than fine. His coat was silky green, figured with leaves, his trousers and ruffled shirt black. He wore Korval’s Ring properly on the third finger of his left hand, and an emerald drop hung in his right ear.
“Guess I’m ready,” she said, but he shook his head.
“You have not placed your jewels. Allow me.”
He slipped his right hand under her left, and raised it while he drew his left hand out of his pocket.
Rings. Miri sighed. She should’ve expected rings.
First was the silver ring that went on the third finger of her left hand, the Tree-and-Dragon etched into the flat top. Not Korval’s official Ring, just a gentle reminder that she was Korval, too.
The statement ring properly seated, Val Con bent and kissed her knuckles before he released the left hand and picked up the right. Jeweled rings went onto three fingers and one on her thumb—purple and pale, just something to add a little shine and glitter, that was all.
Another chaste kiss on her hand, and he let her go, stepping back to offer his arm.
“Now, you are ready,” he said. “Shall we?”
* * *
They paused at th
e floor manager’s station, just to have a look-over and see what they were up against.
“Who knew Surebleak would clean up so good?” Miri said, considering the crowd below.
Given Surebleak’s current clash of cultures, there was a fairly wide spread in the notion of what constituted respectful clothes for a reception with people who were deciding the future of your port and, by extension, your homeworld.
Pat Rin—Boss Conrad, Boss of Bosses, and owner of the Emerald Casino—had dressed grand, in the Liaden style: an emerald-green coat shot with silver over a white shirt showing some very modest silver-edged ruffles, and dark trousers. Natesa, his lifemate, had defaulted to the formal wear of her homeworld—a long length of emerald silk, embroidered in silver, which was wrapped around her, tight in some places, loose in others, and the leftover, heavy with embroidery, draped over one arm. Looking at that costume, Miri thought, a person might believe that there wasn’t any room to conceal a weapon.
And a person would be wrong.
The rest of the Bosses, scattered ’round the room, had opted for their new jackets of office, in the shade that had immediately become known on the street as Boss Blue.
There were a surprising number of dress uniforms on display. Surebleak being Surebleak, the surest way off-planet had historically been to sign with a mercenary unit. Nothing to wonder about there. What was strange was the number of ’bleakers who came home after they’d got done in the merc, which Miri herself had always sworn she wouldn’t do—and look how good that’d worked.
“Enough hash marks down there to field an army,” she said to Val Con.
“If we don’t care about mixing forces.”
“Don’t look like that’ll bother anybody at all.”
She nodded down at a tall woman talking to dayside Portmaster Claren Liu. Angela “Liz” Lizardi had been Miri’s own commander in the merc. She’d been retired, but once on Surebleak, she’d taken up duty as Port Security chief, “to keep from getting bored,” she said. Liz was wearing the good parts from both of her uniforms, and every single one of her medals.
Standing nearby and chatting with Boss Schomaker was Andy Mack, retired from the merc as a colonel, looking fit and fine in his dress uniform, and fielding even more medals than Liz.
