by C. Gockel
“He’s one of them ,” 6T9 protested.
“Yes, but he was also one of my pets for many years,” Carl Sagan replied. “Also, he gives excellent scratches.”
“Fickleness, thy name is werfle,” 6T9 grumbled aloud.
The werfle’s thoughts came in a purr. “Oh, yes, right there…behind the ear, yes…”
“Mr. Niano?” Volka asked. “Should I make some excuse? ”
“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose, commanding the static to subside.
Carl Sagan’s thoughts came through the ether. “If you run, we won’t get to Libertas in time. Sundancer is in danger.” Darkness spread through the ether until it blocked out 6T9’s vision and his auditory channels were silent.
“Stop it, werfle,” he hissed.
The darkness vanished and his ears were filled with the sound of Volka’s tray crashing to the floor. The weere woman fell to one knee. Her breath came in staccato gasps.
“Volka?” he said, kneeling beside her. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and terrified.
“It’s coming,” she whispered. “The darkness.”
6T9’s Q-comm flashed white hot at the coincidence between Sundancer’s dark emotions and Volka’s strange words, but then Carl Sagan said over the ether, “You’re causing consternation out here.”
6T9 gulped. He didn’t have a heart as such, but his senses were ticking down the milliseconds. If he ran away, he’d never get aboard the Leetier; if he didn’t get aboard the Leetier, the mission was a failure; Sundancer would be destroyed, and he was never going home.
Darmadi poked his head into the kitchen. “What are you—?” he hissed.
Standing quickly, 6T9 said, “I bumped into Volka and knocked over the platter. So clumsy of me. I’ll be right there.”
Smoothing his chef’s jacket, feeling Eliza’s ashes beneath, he walked past Darmadi out into the dining room.
Volka heard the sound of shattering porcelain from the dining room and it snapped her from her daze. Retrieving her fallen platter, she jumped to her feet and ran from the kitchen. The archbishop was staring at Mr. Niano, his coffee cup and saucer were in shards, and liquid was spreading through the table cloth.
“Archbishop, Your Excellency, are you all right?” the counselor was asking.
“Should we call a doctor?” his daughter asked.
“The phone is in my study,” said Mr. Darmadi as Volka hastened to pick up the shards.
“Pick up the pieces before he cuts himself!” the counselor’s wife wailed as Volka did exactly that.
“I’m fine!” said the archbishop.
The room went silent. For a moment, the archbishop and Niano regarded each other, and then, dropping his eyes, the archbishop said, “I believe you had a painting to show us, Darmadi?”
“Ah, yes…it’s in the study,” Mr. Darmadi replied.
“Well, let us adjourn there,” the archbishop said, stroking the werfle that hadn’t left his lap. “Volka, would you push me?”
A few minutes later, Volka listened to the painting reveal from just outside the study door. Despite her exhaustion, she smiled at the ohs and ahs, and grinned outright when the counselor’s wife commented on the “gorgeous contrast!” That was her work, even if Mr. Darmadi had done the color. The counselor said, “This is a fine gift for my future son-in-law,” and his daughter said, “He looks so handsome,” perhaps a bit wistfully. Beaming, Volka retreated to the kitchen to fetch fresh coffee and sweets. When she came back to the study, the archbishop had gone, though the rest of the party was still admiring the painting and chatting. It wasn’t her place to ask where he was, so she didn’t. She was pouring refills of coffee when the counselor’s wife commented, “Mr. Darmadi, I hear your nephew Alaric is stationed on Libertas.”
Volka almost dropped the coffee decanter.
Perhaps taking pity on her, Darmadi said, “Volka, why don’t you go get a fresh batch of coffee.” She nodded hastily and left. Her stomach knotted. Would she be serving coffee to Alaric soon?
Closing her eyes, she bit her lip and turned from the hallway to the front room.
“Volka.”
The archbishop’s voice made her stop. Opening her eyes, she saw his chair was in front of the window, and he was staring out at the lights on the lawn. The werfle, seated on his lap, looked up at her and slowly blinked its eyes.
“Volka,” said the archbishop, not turning around. “Please go fetch Sixty Ni…the chef.”
Volka swallowed. He’d called Mr. Niano Sixty…they knew each other. The hair on the top of her head stood up. She was frightened, though she wasn’t sure why. She shook her head. No, she did know why. It had been a strange few days. Myra’s half-human baby. Her strange visions. And now, an archbishop and a chef—a strange man from the interior provinces—knowing one another. She wondered if the end times were approaching.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
Leaning over the sink, up to his elbows in hot soapy water, 6T9 was cleaning up and letting the heat of the water recharge him when Volka returned to the kitchen.
“The archbishop wishes to speak to you,” she said.
Gravity seemed to increase. Had he thought he’d gotten off easy? That perhaps Kenji had forgotten him?
“What does he want?” 6T9 asked, looking over his shoulder.
Volka stammered, “I don’t know.” Her lip curled, and her hands made fists at her sides. “But you should be respectful! He is nice to my kind.”
“He’s not kind to my kind,” 6T9 snapped.
She blinked at him. “What kind is that?”
6T9’s Q-comm hummed, searching for a reply, but then Carl’s thoughts intruded across the ether. “He recognizes you by the cooking—he knows you’re not some other version of the same 6T9 model—and he misses his sister, Noa.”
“He misses Noa?” 6T9 replied, his eyes going beyond the weere woman. His skin began to heat.
“Noa?” Volka whispered, her ears flicking madly.
Drying his hands with a dishtowel, 6T9 walked out of the kitchen, circuits buzzing. He found Kenji sitting in his wheelchair, back to him. Carl Sagan was laying across his lap, flexing his claws and purring softly. Kenji Sato was a frail old man, but 6T9 had an eidetic memory, and his memories of the days before Revelation were as clear as the present. He remembered dismembered ‘bots and phaser fire. He remembered Noa, Kenji’s sister, sicker and as frail as Kenji was now, though she’d been in her prime. He remembered the scars from where she’d been tortured at a re-education camp for heresy. “What do you want,” was a snarl at the tip of 6T9’s tongue, but before he could say it, Kenji spoke gibberish. “Nihon go wakaru ?”
6T9’s Q-comm was instantly alight, processing the nonsense. Before he could snap at Kenji, the world went briefly white, there was a rush of heat at the back of his head and a download commenced...and then he did understand. It was Japanese, a mostly dead language. Kenji was asking if he spoke it. “I do now,” 6T9 responded. He hadn’t been designed to form the syllables correctly, nor did he have practice, and it came out heavily accented and barely understandable to his own auditory centers.
Kenji nodded. In Japanese, he said, “They have had me running simulations to discover where you might have wound up since you arrived.”
“Running simulations?” 6T9 responded. “In what? A sandbox with toy starfighters?”
“On the planet’s central computer,” Kenji said, blinking behind his bifocals. “The only computer not on our ships that we allow.”
6T9 stared out at the lawn, digesting the implications. 6T9 was a computer, and he was not allowed. There were lights along the drive that made the raindrops sparkle. Why was Kenji stringing him along by telling him all this?
Kenji continued in a quiet voice, “Antigrav for the Leetier and other vessels leaving the spaceport requires vast computing powers. We also use it to monitor the readouts of our buoys, to calculate solar weather, and the climates on Luddeccea, Libertas, Atlantia,
and other outposts in this system. My priests and I monitor it to m ake sure that it doesn’t develop awareness of its own.”
6T9 exhaled, remembering the sign on the side of the bus, Do you know someone interested in Computer Science? The Priesthood can help.
Kenji continued, his voice inflectionless. “There is some thought that without an ethernet and the constant influx of human thoughts, it is impossible for consciousness to develop—that your self-awareness is just a mimicry of human self-awareness as your emotions are just mimics of ours.”
Static crawled along 6T9’s spine. “So lovely to see that you haven’t changed.”
Kenji looked up at him as though startled. Not quite meeting 6T9’s eyes, he shook his head. “But I have changed a great deal.”
6T9’s eyes narrowed, and his lips curled in a smirk. “Not so much as you would have if you hadn’t received nano injections.” Kenji would be a skeleton in the ground without nanotech—nanotech that was officially banned on Luddeccea.
Kenji sighed and looked out at the lawn again. “I pretend to not know about that. It’s easier that way. They need me…” His expression turned sad. “I suppose as my sister’s spy, you have a ship waiting nearby.”
6T9 blinked at Kenji’s assumption. Carl Sagan rolled onto his back and purred loudly. Over the ether, the werfle said, “He thinks we’re so much more competent than we really are!”
“Shut up, werfle,” said 6T9.
Kenji put a protective hand on Carl Sagan. “He’s just purring, 6T9.” And then, shaking his head, Kenji said, “The central computer is as powerful as any time gate. Yet in none of its most likely outcomes, did it predict I’d find you here. ” A wistful smile crept onto his face. “It’s almost like fate. ”
6T9 blinked. “How did you know it was me you were looking for?”
“We have spies too, Sixty, ” Kenji replied.
According to 6T9’s sensors, the temperature in the room did not drop. It only felt like it did. He thought of the murder he’d witnessed aboard the Kanakah Disk. Yes, they did have spies.
Kenji’s brows lifted, and he looked up at 6T9. “Why my sister chose you…I don’t understand. You’re not at all inconspicuous.”
“Archbishop?” a man asked, the word spoken in the common tongue.
Turning, 6T9 found himself facing an Afro-Eurasian man wearing a long light cloak over crisp dress trousers, both in Luddeccean Green.
“Ah, Counselor Abbasi,” said Kenji, wheeling his chair around with surprising strength. “Just having a word with…the chef…” To 6T9, he said in Japanese, “Let my sister know we’ll be here…I’ll be here…when you need us. We’ve got her left flank.”
6T9 tilted his head, trying to decipher the strange message.
“Your Excellency?” Counselor Abbasi said.
“Nothing, nothing, just a private word between myself and the chef,” Kenji said, rolling his chair toward the man. Carl Sagan leaped from Kenji’s lap and hopped over to 6T9.
The counselor looked up at 6T9 with hard eyes. 6T9 bowed. When he straightened, the two men were heading toward the study.
“Well, that could have gone worse,” 6T9 thought to the werfle, Kenji’s words, I’ll be here , replaying in his mind .
Licking his side, Carl Sagan replied in the ether. “Abbasi plans on having you investigated by the Guard.”
“Should I assume investigated means violently interrogated?” 6T9 asked, circuits firing.
The werfle licked a paw. “Precisely.”
13
The Guard Strikes
An hour after the last guest had left the dinner party, Volka walked through the streets of No Weere. The night sky was overcast, but the rain had stopped. It was the very beginning of the Season, and the streets weren’t crowded, but they weren’t empty, either, even at the late hour. Every few blocks, she’d see a couple out, laughing and flirting. Older weere were watching them from porches, ready to shoo them into an alley if they became too amorous, or to grab them by the ear and drag them inside depending on their age.
Volka barely saw them. Mr. Niano’s words before she left replayed in her mind. “The Leetier leaves at six in the morning. You’ll have to be back by four a.m. Why do you have to go all the way back to No Weere just for a few hours? There are plenty of guest rooms in the main house.”
If he’d suggested she’d stay in the guest house, she would have known it was a proposition to stay with him, but he’d suggested the main house. Volka shook her head. He was just so…odd. Imagine, a weere maid staying with a single human man at his proper home. The rumors it would cause, the stains on Darmadi’s reputation and hers. Her brow furrowed. And yet, as strange as Mr. Niano was, he had spoken to a saint in a strange language. She’d listened and seen the sour expression on the counselor; the man had positively reeked with suspicion.
Her heart skipped a beat. Mr. Niano, Myra, visions…She felt like she was caught up in a crescendo of strangeness. She swallowed. Tomorrow she would go to Libertas. That would be the height of the crescendo—and it would be beautiful. She and Mr. Darmadi would return. Sixty—Mr. Niano—would find a job at one of those fine restaurants in New Prime, and she wouldn’t see him again. Her visions would end, too—they were probably just a manifestation of her excitement.
She sloshed through a puddle, passed a pair of lovers, and came to a stop at the middle of an intersection. The cross street was the lane Joseph and Esther lived on. She turned and looked in the direction of their house. The street wound around a hillock of salvaged rubble, and she couldn’t see their home.
She hesitated. It was late. Tomorrow was a long day, and she should go home. She bowed her head. Weren’t people always up if they had a new baby? She should go visit; being jealous was unbecoming.
Volka took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and headed down the narrower lane. If a light was on at Esther and Joseph’s, she’d knock; if one wasn’t, she wouldn’t. Her heart started beating faster at thought of the miracle baby, and a lump formed in her throat. Her unease made her think the escalating quiet was only her imagination. She was rounding the final curve of the bend where the rough gravel gave way to only mud when she noticed the tire tracks. Pausing, she stared at them. Maybe Myra’s patron had decided to come collect her and his son? The tracks, she noted, only went one way. The hair on the back of Volka’s neck stood on end.
She looked back the way she’d come. The last light was over six hundred paces back. Ears flattening, she left the lane, squeezed between two darkened shanty houses, slung her satchel over her back, and began picking her way up the hillock. Made of slabs of shattered concrete, each as thick as her thigh, and many twice as long as her body or longer, the slabs were remnants of the old city destroyed by the possessed Time Gate 8. Garbage and smaller debris drifted here and there, but the basic terrain of the hillock hadn’t changed since she was a girl. Instead of climbing to the top of the hillock, Volka crept along the side of it until she reached a spot where one giant fragment leaned against another, creating a small cave. She sniffed. There were the usual vagrants about, but not close by. Crouching down, she entered the tunnel. It was too dark to see even for a weere. She held out her hands to protect herself from long, snaking pieces of ancient rebar, and sniffed continuously. When she smelled fresh air and weere, she turned right, ducked once…and her heart stopped.
She smelled human.
For a moment, she didn’t move, but then she heard and smelled only weere nearby. The humans were off in the distance. She sniffed again. Did she smell blood?
“Why did they do it?” a girl whispered.
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” said a young boy .
“Believe,” said a gruff older voice she recognized.
“Hany,” Volka whispered, bending low beneath a slab and creeping forward. When she lifted her head again, the faint light filtering through the rubble seemed brilliantly bright. She was in a space she used to play in. Roughly six paces across, there was
a shoulder-high “window” in front of her, and a “skylight,” narrow but tall, behind and above her over the slab she’d just slunk beneath. In the space were two not-quite of age weere. They smelled like siblings, were well dressed for weere, and were very human-looking and definitely out of place in the hillock in the middle of the night. Hany, on the other hand, was dressed in near rags. Hany had wolf-like features—yellow eyes, pointed ears, and a snout—but he also had human hair that never stopped growing. The result was that he had a mane and looked more like a picture Volka had seen of an Earther lion than weere or human. Hany had no home or family that Volka knew of. Unlike most weere, pheromones had no effect on him, and he’d never taken a partner. He “didn’t like doors,” and lived in the hillock or under other bits of rubble, sometimes in the woods, and, occasionally, had slept under Volka’s porch. He did odd jobs for clean clothes now and then and sold fresh rats and fish on the streets.
“Volka,” Hany said, and scratched behind an ear. The ear flicked. “Heard them say your name. Asked where you was.”
“Who?” Volka asked.
“The Guard, at Joseph and Esther’s,” Hany said.
Volka went cold. Her fingers twisted at her side. No, no, no…don’t believe the worst. They’d probably come to escort Myra back to the home her patron had given her. After he realized the baby was his, and a miracle, he’d wanted her back. “What happened?” Volka asked. Her voice came out tiny and childlike.
She heard one of the nocturnal pterys flap by and screech.
And then the boy said, “We weren’t asleep. We were watching the Season from our window.”
Volka’s ears flattened, remembering doing the same when she was their age, and swearing to herself she’d never get “crazy like that.”
“And then we saw the guard driving up, and thought that was more interesting,” said the girl.
