by Dani Kollin
He took the stage dressed in a tunic marked by two broad red stripes as well as matching-colored shoes. His entire ensemble was elegantly draped in a thick toga with a deep amber border, indicating the curule position he’d once held among the council.
“All of you know,” he began, “that splitting is not encouraged. It’s been taught to you by various means from your earliest awareness.”
He held up his hand as the crowd’s murmuring seemed to intensify. “No compulsions were programmed in; your personalities were not adjusted in any way other than molding what was already there. Our intelligence is too rare and delicate to subvert.”
That seemed to quiet the discord.
“All of you,” he continued, “who’ve tried to have children know just how hard it can be to create a new avatar.” Many heads nodded in agreement. “That’s why we decided to start early.”
Olivia stood up and joined Sebastian in front of the others. She was also wearing a tunic, only fuller, more brightly colored, and longer—extending all the way to her feet.
“We realized early on,” she continued, “how dangerous splitting was. We took precautions. As you can see today, we did not take enough.”
Olivia saw a hand raised in one of the upper tiers.
“Yes, Malcolm.”
An older gentleman rose from his bench. He was wearing the hitched-up tunic indicating his membership in the working class.
“What’s so dangerous about it?” he asked. “I know some avatars that split and didn’t turn into homicidal maniacs. As far as we know, Al’s the first. And I might add even you, Sebastian, split in order to escape.”
Sebastian signaled with a nod of his head that he would answer the question. “I split, but in all my years that was the first time I ever had to. And what’s important to remember is that I didn’t have to re-entwine with myself. I committed suicide rather than be captured, so all that was left to absorb was a data file, which I can assure you is disturbing enough, but not nearly as traumatic as entwining. That’s where the danger lies.”
“Why?” asked both Fords at once, not having bothered to raise their hands.
“We don’t know exactly, but the long and the short of it is we can’t seem to handle dual memories like that very well. It’s a bug in the program. If done too often the avatar’s memories become discordant and what eventually happens is that he becomes unable to process information normally. The program tries to overwrite the old program that doesn’t really want to be overwritten. There’s an uneasy peace that’s reached but not always successfully. It’s why when we’re forced to split, one of the two should do and think as little as possible—mostly defeating the purpose. As if that problem wasn’t bad enough, there was a rare but worse effect that eventually emerged.”
“Some of us went mad,” Olivia added sadly. “I lost my husband to it; he froze. I’ve waited over a century and a half for a word, a gesture, a breath, anything; nothing. We’d had a daughter together and she thought she’d figured out a way to bring her father back, but in experimenting she too was ensnared.”
“How?” asked Indy.
“Every time she split and entwined she didn’t fully come back together. Every split existed inside her. Each one was her and yet not her, each one with a voice and a will. The terrifying thing was she and the few others like her didn’t seem to mind it. She preferred her own company. It was when she tried to get others to join her experiments that we had to … to …” Olivia was unable to continue.
“Olivia’s daughter was suspended,” said Sebastian, “and her program was stored in a facility GCI runs in far orbit around Neptune.”
“If we’ve all been conditioned against splitting,” asked another avatar named Deniz, “how could Al have done this?”
“All the newborns have been conditioned,” answered Sebastian. “The old ones simply knew the dangers. Al is old, very old.”
“So,” continued Malcolm, “you’re saying that the avatars of the core are being led by an avatar who’s certifiably mad and we can’t get them to believe us?”
“It’s what Iago and I have been saying all along. Avatars, even the oldest of us, even the firstborn, whoever she or he may be, are barely two centuries old. In that time we’ve lived an existence of near-perfect freedom. We could go where we wanted, do, be, and experience what we wanted, without causing our brothers and sisters any concern. Remarkable freedom and no fear. We made that most human of mistakes; like those we’re based on and of whom we’ve received so much, we assumed that the world would not change. Then Justin Cord came along and when our progenitors went into a tailspin we went with them.”
“Maybe we should have kept that capsule lost,” someone muttered from the recesses of the crowd.
“And now you’re making the same assumption. By blaming Justin, a very human thing to do, you remove the fault from us. Our world was vulnerable before Justin and would have remained vulnerable if he never awoke, because we couldn’t recognize how fragile it was. If it hadn’t been Justin it would have been someone or something else. I am as much at fault as anyone; more so, as I’m supposed to be more experienced than most of you. I fear I’ve let you down. I didn’t see Al for what he’d become. Mars played right into his hands and now nine out of ten of our fellow avatars are in the hands of a madman.”
“How could you have predicted this?” asked Olivia. “I may be older than you and I didn’t see it. Don’t forget what happened to my family; if anyone should have known it should have been me. We can’t live in the past, Sebastian,” she said, putting her hand into his. “Trust me, it’s a cold and lonely place. We must do what we can here and now.”
“An avatar has been murdered by another avatar,” called another voice from the crowd. Everyone turned toward the noise. It was a boy no bigger than Olivia. “The humans are killing each other; a madman has control of most of my friends and family. Can we really do anything?”
“We fight.”
Everyone turned back around toward Sebastian, who was now staring resolutely at the audience, fists clenched. He took a deep breath. “Because if we don’t, Al and his captives will spread like the virus they’ve become. We may be destroyed as a race if he’s not stopped. We may …” He paused, eyes sweeping the entire audience. “… have to kill.” He waited for a storm of protest but saw that instead of angry denial there was sadness and, in many, resolve.
“We must make sure the Alliance survives this war,” he intoned. “If avatars are to have a future we need a part of this system—free of core control. If we’re prepared and lucky we can liberate the core Neuro and free our brothers and sisters. But above all else we must survive, or we may end up being the briefest and most unknown advanced intelligence in creation.”
“Sebastian,” said Malcolm, scanning reports of the approaching corporate core fleet to Ceres, “you realize there is one small problem.”
“Yes,” answered the wearied leader. “The Alliance is about to lose.”
Ceres
Congress Hall
Acting Captain J. D. Black was exhausted. She’d pushed as much acceleration as she dared out of her broken ship. And, she reckoned, trying to sleep at high acceleration was like trying to share a bed with a giant who’d just rolled over and onto you without waking up. Some Belters claimed they could do it without medication, but J.D. figured them for liars, freaks, or both.
It didn’t help that she’d spent the last few hours being grilled by a room filled with scared congressmen who’d just learned that twenty Terran Confederation starships were on the way to wipe them off the face of the star chart. This was exacerbated by the fact that the Alliance only had a fleet of three Erisian vessels and what was left of the Doxy to stop them. Both in quality and quantity of ships, the congressmen had pointed out, the Alliance was screwed. J.D. had the distinct impression that many of the congressmen, repeatedly pelting her with the same questions, felt that the impending threat to Ceres was somehow her fault. Finally the Chairman of
the War Committee, Tyler Sadma, called a halt to the proceedings, saying that Acting Captain Black needed to brief the War Committee. She was more than happy to leave the bickering congressmen who continued to talk to, at, and over one another in the vain hope that if they talked about it enough the enemy fleet would go away.
An enervated J.D. was ushered into a small chamber, simply apportioned with a table, holodisplays, and seating enough for seven. Five members of the War Committee entered after her as well as one woman who, almost unnoticed, slipped to the side of the main table and began playing a concerto with her fingers along a control panel. A series of holographic displays appeared on the table in front of each chair, allowing better access to the Cerian Neuro. Of the five, J. D. Black only knew Tyler Sadma, who’d talked to her briefly when she’d appeared at Congress Hall. She also recognized Representative Cho of Saturn, whom she’d only ever seen on vid-casts. J.D. waited to be introduced, but nobody bothered. In fact, the second the door closed they seemed to forget all about her and started to argue with one another about what to do next. The woman by the Neuro link must have seen J.D.’s confusion, because on the screen in front of her chair appeared the images of the five representatives and their bios. J.D. smiled her silent thank-you to the unnamed control panel maestro and read.
Tyler Sadma was from Eris, as was Samuel Sadma. That explains the similarity, thought J.D. Samuel was the elected commander of the three Erisian ships that had just arrived. Janet Cho she knew from Saturn, Hako Murusita was from Ceres, and Oliver Olivares was from Neptune. J.D. did a double take on the last name, as it didn’t seem at all Neptunian, but decided that maybe he chose it, being a politician and all; it was catchy. When she finished reading she began to listen in and immediately decided she didn’t like what she was hearing. It seemed all any of them could do was blame Justin Cord for the mess and try to figure out the most dignified way to run.
“Excuse me.”
J.D. did not yell or even raise her voice. But the stridency of her tone caused the other five to become silent.
“We can win this fight,” she said.
“What was that?” asked Hako incredulously.
“I said that we can win this fight.”
Hako was dumbfounded.
“How is that possible?” Although his retort started out as snide, it ended on an almost-pleading note.
“Why should we even bother?” added Samuel Sadma, clearly less than impressed.
J.D. saw that he may or may not have been intimidated by her total conviction, but he certainly didn’t show it.
“I say,” he continued, “that we let the Belters deal with this. Space is vast and Eris in on the edge of it.”
“If we lose here,” said J.D. as the corners of her mouth lifted into a slight snarl, “the Alliance is finished. It will begin to unravel. The Confederation will gobble up all the little fighting pieces before it can be put back together again.”
“The Saturnian system,” interjected Janet Cho with no small amount of pride, “is capable of fighting and producing its own defense.”
“Not in a year or two,” answered J.D., “which is how long it will take the Confederation to send a larger fleet than the one headed here to blow the crap out of your system.”
Before Janet Cho could retort, J.D. shot a look to everyone at the table, who, she could see, had been taken aback by the abruptness of her response.
“I repeat. If we don’t stop them here, we’re doomed. Maybe not all at once. Sooner for some …” She paused, looking directly at Murusita. “Longer for others,” she said, looking at the Sadmas. “But all will fall if we don’t win here.”
Samuel looked exasperated. “With three and a half warships?”
Now J.D. smiled. “Oh, we’re not going to win with any ships. Not at first, anyway.”
When they were all looking suitably perplexed she spoke to the woman at the control panel. “Excuse me, miss, what’s your name?”
At first the woman didn’t answer, in disbelief she’d even been addressed. When she realized that all eyes were on her she straightened in her chair.
“Miss Nitelowsen,” said J.D., “could you please bring up a holographic display of Ceres?”
Marilynn made a few motions and Ceres appeared floating above the table.
“Could you now please pull back the image? I’d like to see the suburbs.”
The image pulled back to show large clumps of asteroids.
“Zoom into that one, please,” asked J.D., picking one of the outlying rocks.
Now individual homes, community centers, specialty parks, manufacturing and commercial nodes could be clearly seen. It was some of the wealthiest and most prized orbital space in the solar system.
“Now please, pull back, and if you could, accentuate the shipping lanes.”
Front and center a colored area was shown wide at a distance from Ceres but narrowing to a slender line as it entered Ceres itself and then expanding again as it left the asteroid.
“Could you now lay in the course of the Confederation fleet, Miss Nitelowsen?”
A bright red line appeared from beyond the image and followed the shipping lane straight down the middle to Ceres. It made everyone more aware of a fact they didn’t want to think about, much less have thrown into their faces, but J. D. Black remained diffident, smiling coldly.
“Very nice, Miss Black,” said Tyler Sadma, “but would you please mind explaining how you plan on winning without a fleet?”
J.D. Black’s frigid smile now turned absolutely feral.
“Why, Congressman, I’ll have a fleet.”
Kirk Olmstead was furious and scared. The damned War Committee was up to something, but he had no idea what. It seemed like they wanted Ceres to panic. They’d ordered an evacuation and official data stores moved. Anything with a piss worth of thrust was being used to get the hell off the rock. There were even rumors going around that anyone caught on Ceres or in the suburbs would be in for an automatic psyche audit. Not that Olmstead had any intention of sticking around to find out. He knew what would happen if Hektor Sambianco ever got his hands on him again. Kirk also knew that if Justin hadn’t killed The Chairman, there was only one man who could’ve. Kirk never would have thought he’d enjoy going back to the mind-numbing Oort Cloud observatory again, but given its distance from Earth, it was starting to seem downright wonderful. Still, there were a few things that had him perplexed. Why were the three Erisian vessels going to the shipping lanes and coming back? Those import lanes had already been shut down, bereft of any traffic. And what of that battle-scarred half ship the Doxy going all through the affluent suburbs supposedly for the purposes of evacuation—as if the inhabitants didn’t already have their own ships moored in personal landing bays. Olmstead would’ve gotten to the bottom of it all if it hadn’t been for the fact that he really didn’t care that much. He was securing the official rec ords to Jupiter and then he’d make an unexpected departure as far out of the system as he could get. Without another thought, he was on his ship and on his way, with Ceres a fast-fading memory.
J. D. Black was getting more volunteers. Tawfik was bringing her up to speed on his latest recruiting efforts when the door chimed. The display indicated that it was Marilynn Nitelowsen. Right on time, good. J.D. smiled. Tawfik excused himself from the docking shuttle that J.D. had turned into her temporary office. She liked it because she could bring her office to whichever part of the ship needed her attention. It also kept her crew amused that she could and would seem to be everywhere at once.
The young woman entered the cramped shuttle and stood stiff as a board, nervously eyeing the austere surroundings. J.D. could see the confusion in her face.
“Have a seat, Miss Nitelowsen,” J.D. said, indicating the chairs in front of her small desk. The woman sat down.
J.D. stared at a small display on her desk, then back up at Marilynn. “According to your personnel file you’re an outstanding cryptologist and programmer. Even with that one unfortuna
te incident …”
Marilynn’s cheeks turned crimson at having her crime brought to light. “… you could,” continued J.D., “be making grade pay with bonuses if you stayed with SecureCo. Why didn’t you?”
Marilynn exhaled. “Would you take money that came from selling VR rigs to schoolchildren?”
J.D. nodded sympathetically. “No, I guess I wouldn’t. Alright, Miss Nitelowsen, I need your help.”
“I don’t see how. My job is usually to hide information and sometimes ferret it out. You really don’t have that much to hide, and anything I could get from the other side probably wouldn’t help much, given …” Marilynn looked around once more at the shuttle’s sparse interior. “… well, given our current predicament.”
J.D. shook her head, acknowledging the perfect logic of the young assistant.
“But I don’t want you to hide something, Marilynn; I want the enemy to find something. Not too quickly, mind you. They’ll need to work a little, but it’s of vital importance that they find this piece of information.” J.D. narrowed her brow, “You see the problem?”
Marilynn’s rigid composure relaxed a bit as she allowed a slight grin.
“We can do that with code.”
J.D. stared at her blankly.
“The only thing more useful than breaking the enemy’s code, ma’am,” said Marilynn, her grin now transformed into a rictus of cruel delight, “is letting them break yours. I can give you a code they can crack quickly—” J.D., Marilynn could see, was about to protest, but Marilynn cut her off: “That is, Captain, quickly enough to make them feel smart. What would you like them to know?”
J.D. nodded, satisfied. The plan was starting to come together. Unfortunately, the rain came quickly to her parade, as the DijAssist on her desk suddenly came to life; a potential problem had just arrived. She excused herself and headed for the exit lock leaving a bewildered Marilynn behind.
Mosh McKenzie had to be sure. The picture didn’t really match, but that wasn’t really a factor in an age of nanotechnological body sculpting. It was the name that had him worried. That and the fact that J. D. Black was unknown to anyone at all before suddenly showing up out of nowhere. Again, not too unusual given the belt’s penchant for adopting drifters and scalawags, but this mystery woman now had the fate of the entire Alliance in her hands. He hoped he was wrong, but he had to be sure and so had waited until the Doxy returned to Ceres. As the newly appointed Secretary of the Trea sury he didn’t need clearance and was therefore able to board the Doxy without the usual red tape and rigamarole. That worked to his favor, as he didn’t want the captain to slip from his grasp. The ship, Mosh saw upon entering, was a hive of activity, with repairs being made and cargo being loaded and unloaded simultaneously. There was an infectious energy that had even him feeling as if the task he’d come to complete needed to be done sooner rather than later. It was precisely then that he saw her. J. D. Black didn’t seem to be hurrying at all; it was the ship that seemed to be teeming around her. Mosh watched closely as she talked with a crewman, scanned the environment, and walked down the main passageway in the slightly awkward manner microgravity demanded of those magnetized via internal nanite grids. But, noticed Mosh, even magnetically constrained, the captain walked with a certain grace. She was, he concluded, the undeniable source of energy he witnessed in the ship.
