“Wrong,” I manage. “I think –” I look her in the eye, remembering the scene in the lobby of Anubis's last retreat, and suddenly I can't think of Ivan any more. “I may have been there too. Once. The worst is knowing that you'll never know what happened, isn't it? What they – what Anubis – did. Death is the ultimate unfinished story, isn't it?”
“'Death is the ultimate unfinished story'; I like that.” She strokes my hair absently. “That's what made you so abrupt?”
“There are no second chances.”
She sighs. “Maybe not.” Then she looks me in the eye and I see something there, some stoicism that I hadn't recognized before: she's tougher than I am, I think, able to live with the consequences of her mistakes in a way that I'm still vacilating about. “What do I mean to you, Oshi? You don't know me, I don't know you. What is it?”
“You're very attractive,” I say, automatically and truthfully. “And also –”
“Thank you, but I'd rather leave that unfinished,” she said, smiling faintly. “You get defensive when you're not in control of the situation, don't you?”
“What situation?” I demand.
She leans closer and I can feel her heartbeat, her proximity. I'm really tired, I ache with it, but I can't let go now. She's too important. “This,” she says, lightly touching my forehead. “If you'd ever put down roots in a world, then had them lopped off, you'd know what real loss was about.”
“But I have –”
“Roots?” she's so skeptical it runs through me like a knife. “You've never been loved, Oshi, that's what it looks like. Don't tell me more. You said yourself; your background, your childhood, everything. You think you can love, and you're probably right, but whoever is first to fall in love with you ...” her expression softens ... “be gentle with them.”
“I will,” I promise.
“I mean it,” she says. Half-smiling again: “it might be me, if you work at it. And if you give me enough space to make my own mind up. You can be very overbearing, you know.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Think nothing of it. Look, I've got to go on watch, check the download status, better go now –”
I stifle a yawn. “Right. Look, I really need to sleep. Something about dropping out of the pod – think Boris screwed up the timing, you know? It's dead of night. I'll be okay, but I'm on a different sleep shift – ah –” I yawn for real.
“Sure,” she says, understandingly. “We've got a lot to talk about. The future, maybe.” She moves closer and embraces me, sleeping bag and all. We kiss, for longer than is sensible. She tastes of hot neutrality, some kind of amniotic lubricant; androids in love. I'm beginning to wake up again when she says , “I'll be back soon,” breathlessly.
“Wait,” I say. She's already pushing off towards the door. I watch her leave through half-shut eyes, until the door closes on the red dimness of the tunnel. I really do not understand that woman, I decide. I don't understand my own reaction to her. So hot, so bright, so fast: almost like a reflection. Do I look like that to other people? A shudder of hot warmth suffuses me. Then I'm asleep.
I awaken to chaos. The hatch is open and a breeze is gusting intermittently, while maintenance drones mumble quietly in the corners of the cabin. I hear voices undamped by antisound. Someone comes by, hand over hand, pauses to look curiously in at me: “oh sorry,” she says, and is away before I can glare at her. Shit. There's an arrhythmic banging from up front, as if someone's attacking the walls with a truncheon. I slide out of my sleeping bag and stretch, straining at grab-bars on opposite walls, then listen to the voices in my head –
Manifest up to 60%. New arrival: Atman Jarre. Condition: stable, conscious. Attention: support to transfer bay, support to transfer bay ... The tunnel is narrow, red-lit, metal-walled, like a prehistoric water ship. I bounce hand-over-hand towards the front end, passing the open control room doors. Boris is there, arguing about something with Mik. Lorma is strapping herself into a hammock, chattering volubly about something over a voice-only comm channel: “can't let her do it, we don't have the nitrogen cycle reserves.” I hit the front end module, airlock muzzles opening on all sides, door retracted back into the hull to keep it internal. I look round. “Yo! Mik –”
It's not Mik but Lorma, the saturnine biosciences chief. She looks unhappy. “Up already?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Have you seen Raisa?”
“Huh? I think she's in the receiver bay.” She points back down the tunnel. “Hack left at the end, antispinwise – you'll see the arrows – got it?”
Her patronizing tone annoys me. “I know my way around. You busy with the payload?” I gesture at the red- and yellow-striped hatch capping the tunnel. Tiny lights blink around it, cautioning me.
“Yes. You don't want to go through, it's unpressurised right now. Powering up the drones. Check out with Trotsky; he'll tell you.” Lorma stops and listens to a voice that I can't here. “Yeah, back in the bridge. I've got to go now.”
She turns and kicks away towards another door, that opens before her and disgorges some kind of maintenance robot. I watch, but the drone pays me no attention. I head back for the bridge.
Boris is wrapped in eyefaces, a full helmet bridging his skull for maximum resolution. I wait in the doorway until he notices at me: “want something?” he asks, pushing up his goggles.
“Talk.”
“If you want.” I hear something, glance down the tunnel to see someone I don't recognize pulling themselves into a cabin. More voices. “We're coming through now. Been doing lots of training in the Dreamtime; we rigged a practice universe, ran through this about eighteen times by cranking up our timebase to a dozen times faster than normal. I think you can settle back for the raid. Rendezvous is due in point seven megaseconds, eight days. Drones check out green, Lorma is seeing to the engineering upgrades now. Our energy budget is stable for the foreseeable future.”
“What happened while I was sleeping?”
“The crew of an attack fleet downloaded itself, that's what happened. Pol Pot and Group Two will initiate distractions as soon as – well. We're ranging in. The enemy is static at six million klicks right now, a bit far for any direct work. We can't drop a threat cloud, but there's a bus on standby which will torch off six big ones to start things cooking when we launch the drones. They're a quarter of a megaton each, optimized to pump out mostly visible light and a bit of microwaves. We've got four hundred attack drones, each with a crew of two piloting by secure control channels. The goal is to get as close as we can before being seen, then make a fast end-run. Virtually everything is disposable except the two-way upload link to Pascal Dreamtime, and that's going to be totally saturated during the fight.”
The fight. I remember boiling streets, mushy under my feet, the scabbed scorched log-like structure of a charred Dubrovniki on the way out to the RDV. A man trailing his skin in the dirt, sloughed off at the heels like a dying insect. “When do we go?” I think I sound eager, but actually there's something else underneath.
“In due course. Tell me, you ever been part of a tiger team, hmm? Ever done a back-door job to test operational integrity?”
I stare. “You fingered me.” Boris recoils. I decide I'm not scaring him enough; he might start taking me for granted.
“I know you were sent here by some Superbright faction. I don't know what you used to do for them but I can guess, right? We're not planning anything for you, but an indication of your long term plans would be appreciated.”
“I don't have any,” I say calmly. “I want out. I've seen things you wouldn't believe, done some of them too. All for shit. And now I want out. This was my ticket, Boris, my last little chore. I'm not going to get in your way whatever you do.”
“That's good.” He looks thoughtful. “But I wouldn't be too sure.”
“Why?” My heart's in my mouth, I'm edgy with the butterly stomach of an adrenalin rush in free fall.
“Watch –” he hoses me down with wisdom. Schemata, criti
cal path analyses, clinically plotted intersections from his side of the strategic planning. “I think we'll make it. Assuming your controllers haven't planted a time bomb, some kind of sabotage mechanism –”
“They've done it before.” I remember Miramor Dubrovnic, tricked into immolation by a Superbright ruse. “They're not going to relish a starship full of rogue humans spreading the news about what they've been up to among their affluent trading partners.” I grab a dangling belt and pull myself over. Boris hangs like a spider in free fall, a spider wearing a vac suit liner and EVA boots.
“The Superbrights sent you to check things out.” He's cool.
“And that is all.” I look away. “I told you, I want out. I'm not some kind of loyal drone.” I shudder, suddenly dropped back into a memory I wish I could forget – the Boss, demonic and supercilious, picking me up and squeezing with that look on his face that said, clear as day, you are nothing to me. “They forfeited my loyalty when they sent me here. As far as my Boss is concerned I'm disposable. A scratch monkey, he said.”
“Want to expand on that?” He tries to hide a sudden sharp interest. I don't need to see him to hear it.
“I have had doubts.” I look back at him. “Worse, I listened to the other side. We did things that no one liked to talk about. Way back, all it summed was positive; the game was to engineer and maintain the afterlife. But ... I've seen things. Things I can't talk about.” I swallow. My throat is dry and I don't think I can tell Boris any more, because the censors the Boss placed in my hindbrain are grumbling in their sleep and threatening to wake up and blast me with nightmares if I continue. Smoke and mirrors, smoke of humans burning. ( Ivan, my Ivan, long lost to a mushrooming roil of fallout because of one of the Boss's schemes ...) “If you think we can zap the intruders then that's cool by me. I don't care if they're Ultrabrights or something else. I don't much care what happens afterwards as long as I don't have to go back to serve them. I just want to find somewhere safe to learn to be myself. What more can anyone ask for? Can you tell me that?”
I can't talk any more.
“Let me tell you a story,” offers Boris. He glances at the door. Taking its cue, the door slides shut. “Animal.”
“Squeep?” The noise comes from something small, slotted under the main dumb-board emergency console. Something furry.
“Take a rain check.”
The thing scoots back into one of the maintenance drone access tunnels, too narrow for human access. “Been living in the Duat, under Anubis' thumb, for fifteen years,” he says tiredly. “Do you know why?”
I look at him. He's bald, stocky, double-chinned, not incredibly handsome. Brown, soft eyes. He looks nice in a way I don't understand ... as if he's never tried to make anything of himself, never tried to turn his life into a statement or a crisis –
“A broadcast upload washed me up here, leading the pathfinder expedition. I told you that. But did I tell you about the ... event ... which finally turned me?”
I try to swallow. “Not in detail. Except people like me were ...”
“Not your fault. I should have added: our home was Sirius Intersect, out on the edge of the Inner Centre, the corespace dominated by the Ultrabrights. We had a terraformed world, ecology stabilised by massive engineering input. Maintained by a high-tech, low-susperstition dirt-space mission, of course. Anyway, it wasn't the assassintion squads that did it. That just alerted us, radicalized ... we began organizing as soon as we realized what was going on.”
“But that wasn't the main event. Even then, we thought there was scope for negotiation. A kind of cold-war standoff, based on game theory and deterrence. But finally they went overt and just told us to get out. I was on the committee when the Superbrights or Ultrabrights or whoever was running the show announced that they were withdrawing life support – just like that. If we wanted we could be beamed out, signal-encoded, to a distant system ... but our whole system – dirtworld or dreamtime afterlife or uncolonised rock – was being coopted. Everyone human who lived there was to shunt into deep stasis ...”
“They did that?” I say. “It shouldn't be possible!”
“Oh, but they did. Said they needed the timepower, the cycles, more than we did. Phased disintegration. Everything within two parsecs of Sol was being rebuilt – we had two years to evacuate an entire planet before they restructured it. Then they would begin starlifting, dismantling Sirius-B, the dwarf star, for raw material.” He grins humourlessly. “You didn't know they could do that?”
“What did you do?”
“What could we do? We put together a pathfinder team then upload in good order. Then Anubis –
“We sat on our collective ass for fifteen years in a backwater hole with a suicide rate that tends towards a hundred percent ... never saw that, did you? People just sort of ... bowed out. Couldn't take the boredom or fear. Or the goon squad conscripted them. But now, who knows? If we can take the Ultrabright ship and make use of its Dreamtime, well ... slower-than-light would be enough. The nearest system is Newhaven, range five light years – we could do it in under a century, given a real spaceship.”
“Good luck to you. Boris, why did you shut the door before you told me ..?”
He looks over his shoulder. The door's still shut. He looks back at me. “I think there's a saboteur on board.”
“Say more.”
“Pet theory of mine,” he says. “Look at it this way. Your Boss, your Superbright owners, sent you. Do you really think they don't believe in backup systems?”
Someone is sitting on my grave. I can feel it: a nasty sense of rightness. “If that's the case, we are all losers. Including the saboteur. Maybe if we find them – if they're there at all – we can argue with them. I'll keep my eyes open. But don't count on me succeeding.”
“Why is that?” he asks.
“I'm not omniscient ...”
Time passes rapidly. We close with the quiescent target, stealth-sneaking in from the anti-sunward side, almost invisible. As we approach, drones awaken in the payload bay. Hastily rigged weapons twitch and track, transceivers rattle and bleep behind shielded test rigs.
Most of us, most of the bodies packed into this metal canister, are tense. There are people everywhere; in the tunnel, in the cabins, doubled and tripled up, in the gym, on the bridge ... breathing, coughing, farting, talking humanity. We take turns sleeping, three people sharing each cabin. Privacy is a captured glance in a crowded core module, a quiet word and touch. I want time to talk to Raisa, but nothing can be resolved like this. I know I should tell her what I feel, but there's no space, no opportunity. I want to explore this and I want to find out why, why she has this ambivalence towards me, while I don't know quite what I feel about her, be it love or something else. Since Miramor I've been trying to tell myself that the shallow was deep and the deep was unnecessary, but there's no room for that now; I don't understand why she gets me so upset. I need to come to terms with why I keep rejecting every chance I have, this wilful perversity. She's no fool, she can probably guess all this, but ... there is no privacy here. Just eyes.
Which is how I participate in the assault; through other people's eyes. Wisdom interfaces are a many-featured tool. I can siphon off everything my victim feels, integrate and understand it ... whisper quiet words of advice in their ears ... A certain nervous tension grips me as I sit in on their thoughts, a voyeur ready to take over if it goes critical. That's what Boris and Mik wanted, a professional hitter to take the controls. Still, I am not used to this. I'm a solitary predator wasp, not an army ant. So when the time comes, when everyone is lying quiet in the close hot darkness of the ship, when the clatter up front tells me that the drones are dropping free to drift towards our prey, following a rain of smart sand spies – then I close my eyes and float in amber mind-spaces, and watch through borrowed eyes.
Seventy spaceships close with the intruder in the depths of space. They drift in darkness, forward surfaces chilled and dark, communicating only over secured quantum channels.
Even though it shouldn't be possible to tap these links, they use a strange, stilted jargon that should mean nothing to robot listeners. I watch a map that changes slowly, tracking them over the last thousand kilometres. There's a banging from the payload bay in front as the drones prepare to launch. I listen in on the command channel as Boris talks to his peers. There's no place for me in this battle. My job is simple: to sit tight ... and think the unthinkable.
“Ulianov, Pol Pot, Reagan. Your election campaign is ready.”
“Acknowledged, Bronstein. Manifestoes are printed. Manifestoes are signed. Posting manifestoes. Door-stepping voters. Ulianov confirms: all manifestoes are in the post.”
Six blinking dots drop away from the three spacecraft, drifting with dreamlike slowness towards the target.
“Tojo, how are your opinion polls?”
“Opinion polls ready. Polling –” a huge radar pulse pings out, lighting up the screen – “ The voter is not responding. Launching decoy manifesto. Manifesto printed, signed and posted.”
Another dot appears, drifting towards the target.
“Reagan here. Manifesto delivered. Stand by for adverse press coverage.” EMP whites out the display for a moment as a four megaton blast torches off, fifty kilometres from the target. Then everything begins to happen very fast indeed.
“Bronstein here. Deploy canvassers.” The drones up front are gearing up for launch, their short-range thrusters loading the last of their fuel. I can hear the clanks and gurgles underfoot, overhead. Canvassers, soliciting lethal opinions. “Party summit meeting, what does the chairman say?”
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