by C. Gockel
Peering over Jerome’s shoulder, Young cleared his throat. “I see you have the signal. Let’s go.” He gestured with a thumb to the back of the ship, and the Marines filed off the bridge.
Dr. Patrick exhaled in relief and followed them, not even noticing Volka. She walked to the center of the bridge, dropped the chip, and headed back the way she had come. Rhinehart was waiting for her. Before she entered the hallway, the woman whispered, “Lots of people wouldn’t let a Q-comm go—it’s worth a gazillion credits! It’s a good thing you’re doing.”
Volka’s ears folded. She didn’t know what to say. Bowing her head, she walked toward the aft compartment. Carl’s thoughts invaded hers. “I’m trying to tell Sundancer what to do.” A scene unfolded in Volka’s mind. Sundancer going back to the singularity beam, opening her hull, dropping off Bracelet’s chip, and then heading back to Earth.
Volka entered the compartment, and Sharon joined Carl, Young, Jerome, Dr. Patrick, and Volka there. The door closed. Dr. Patrick said, “It will be good to get back,” and touched the wall. Nothing happened.
Volka felt her stomach constrict. Carl was replaying the sequence of events for Sundancer.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Dr. Patrick commented.
“Give the weasel a minute,” said Young.
Volka stared down at the empty device in her hands. She could probably still talk to it—and it would talk, but it would say, “I am sorry. I don’t know the answer to that question,” more often than not.
The scene Carl was imagining for the chip drop-off played again and again in Volka’s mind, but in her stomach was an ache, loneliness, fear, and she saw the snow of Libertas as though from below …
“Errr … Volka, maybe you could help?” Carl asked.
… Sundancer didn’t like dropping off Bracelet, either. It reminded the ship of her lonely time beneath the ice. Volka had to reassure the ship it wasn’t forever or even a million years. She closed her eyes and pictured everything as Carl had—but after they dropped off the chip, she imagined it spinning into the singularity beam, having its exterior stripped away so all that was left was the single particle that was Bracelet’s connection to her vast computer mind. In Volka’s imagination, Bracelet’s precious subatomic particle was a glowing speck of light. She imagined that speck traveling through the beam to a place far away, and then Sundancer swooping in, discovering the glowing speck, and bringing it home. That was how it would happen, after all, even if it took years. Would they really retrieve the glowing speck? They could track a single particle, but catch it and hold it? Volka didn’t know.
“It’s working!” Carl thought.
Volka opened her eyes, and they were turning to light … and then they were solid again but … but … but … Did someone scream?
Volka felt like her heart was falling into her abdomen, as though nothing was left there to hold it up, and as though her entrails were being pulled out of her, stretching … stretching … stretching …
A siren wailed.
At the edge of her consciousness, someone shouted. “Something is wrong with Tab!”
But Volka was too busy trying to gather up her insides to comprehend their meaning—if she could just catch the rope of her intestines with her fingers, they’d be a lifeline, she’d be able to pull them all back … home.
23
Home
Galactic Republic: Earth
James and Noa had lived on Earth off and on for decades. But the Cusco City hover terminal didn’t register as home to James. He was on edge, hyper alert, his Q-comm not drifting off on its usual “flights of fancy,” as Noa called them.
The terminal was nearly indistinguishable from every other one on Earth. It bustled with travelers, shops on either side of the concourse were selling overpriced food and souvenirs with only the vaguest of connections to the local culture, and here and there news holos played. The anchors were familiar throughout most of the inner systems. Only the commercials were local.
The hover port stood out in only one way. It was 3,300 meters above sea level and the air was thin and dangerous to his “Princess.” James Sinclair was monitoring Captain Darmadi’s vital signs as he guided the Luddeccean through the foot traffic. The captain walked too stiffly, and his breathing was shallow and rapid. He couldn’t inflate his lungs fully, but his oxygen levels were still acceptable.
“It’s very busy,” Darmadi commented. He spoke the words quietly. The man wasn’t like Young, who always spoke as though he were trying to project his voice across a football field. Nonetheless, Darmadi’s words carried through the terminal. It was a public place filled with strangers where communication was almost exclusively through the ether.
The Luddeccean man was probably comparing it to Time Gate 1. “Not particularly for a hover port,” James replied, noting every face that turned their way.
James was supposed to be hospitable. That usually meant small talk, something that James did not excel at. But James always tried to excel at his job, so he added, “Planet-wide hover travel is ubiquitous.”
Darmadi’s eyebrows rose. “Travel between the gates is not?”
Did the Luddeccean sound disappointed, surprised, or curious? James had a three-quarter view of his face but couldn’t read his expression. Not for the first time, he questioned the wisdom of being given this assignment. “It is more expensive,” he said, watching for the reaction that provoked. He knew that Luddeccean propaganda had most of the Galactic Republic in hunger, poverty, and despair.
Darmadi’s face showed no reaction.
Frustrated, James’s Q-comm sparked, and he added, “World Heritage sites are very popular. Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, and Cusco are sites that most Earthlings take in once in their lives. It’s not out of reach for them.” Air travel on Luddeccea was still very expensive, according to Fleet intelligence. Civilian space travel in the Luddeccean System was almost non-existent. It was a dig, and James shouldn’t have said it, obviously. Darmadi’s eyes got distant, but then his lips quirked, and he took a deep breath that was probably a necessity in the thin air, not an expression of emotion. “My request to see Machu Picchu wasn’t exceptional, then?”
“I’m not complaining. I’ve always wanted to come. I do like human history.” Somehow, he and Noa had never gotten here.
Darmadi cocked his head. “You’re interested in our history?”
“It’s my history as well.” It was a point James made with other machines frequently.
Darmadi huffed, in laughter or oxygen debt. “Homo sapiens machina?”
James’s circuits sparked pleasantly—in surprise, and at the turn of phrase. He smirked. “A branch of Homo sapiens cyberneticus.” He hadn’t expected such easy acceptance of the idea. It wasn’t an idea well received by Galactican humans or even other machines. A common refrain among his fellow Q-comm bearers was, “If anything, we are children of the gates. Their sentience wasn’t intentional, or desired, on Homo sapiens part. Humans are not forbearers of the gates or ourselves.”
“Homo sapiens cyberneticus,” Darmadi said. “I suppose that is my species now.” His eyes went longingly to a bar. “It’s an excuse to have a pint of the local specialty. Need to remember I’m human.”
James’s eyebrow rose. It was not yet noon. There was no data that indicated Darmadi was dependent on alcohol. Was his accident and separation from his family harming him psychologically more than anticipated?
The captain growled and a muscle in his jaw jumped. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I’m finding the beer and whiskey on Earth better than I’ve had at home.”
“Really?” James asked, genuinely surprised. “I always thought that Luddeccean agricultural products are superior.”
Darmadi grimaced. “Your meat and cheese is bland, and your bread is a boring tasteless sponge.” His shoulders fell. “But … In the decades after Revelation, food wasn’t allowed to be used for alcohol production. Even scraps went to feeding pigs and chickens or plowing into lan
d to bring Earth microbes into the soil for future crops. Local alcohol production—legal production—has just restarted. A lot of knowledge was lost.”
James remembered the shiploads of humans that had emigrated to Luddeccea after Revelation. “Luddeccea accepted a lot of refugees.” There had been a lot of people who had left the planet, too … but more had come.
In a dry voice, Darmadi said, “To escape brutal repression from the likes of you.” The sarcasm was evident even to someone without neural hardware shaped by a million years of evolution to understand inflection. James hadn’t wanted this assignment, in part, because he believed that Darmadi was hopelessly prejudiced against androids—the man had suggested throwing 6T9 out the Merkabah’s airlock, after all. But maybe it was as Noa had said, “That was personal. Even if his relationship with Volka is over, he doesn’t like 6T9 within five hundred kilometers of her.”
The jealousy-inspired murderous urges between 6T9 and Darmadi were mutual. What a curious case of convergent evolution between Homo machina and Homo sapiens.
“What?” Darmadi asked.
Which was when James realized he was smiling. He wasn’t supposed to do that unconsciously. When had that bug crept into his code? “Still musing over being Homo sapiens machina.”
“Hmm,” said Darmadi, eyes slipping to a holoboard outside the bar. His comment about beer and whiskey must have been heard because the display had switched from “Try our Pisco Sours” to “Serving Chilean Millacoru Single Malt Araucanía Whisky and Peruvian Cusqueña Dorada Pale Lager.”
They’d stopped walking, but the captain’s heart rate was elevated, his breathing still too rapid. “The train has alcohol and a better atmosphere,” James suggested. Trains were, by custom, still the only way to access Machu Picchu—besides going by foot. Importantly, the train would be descending toward Machu Picchu, taking some strain off Darmadi’s lungs.
Darmadi’s attention shifted to the travelers and the blinking lights of all the various advertisements. “Sounds good.”
They began walking again, and Darmadi frowned. “No recruitment posters.”
James grinned—on purpose. “Posters would be very quaint.”
Darmadi huffed. “No electric, buzzing and blinking recruitment holos for Fleet.” He gasped. “How are your recruitment numbers?”
“They are stable,” James replied.
“Stable? There is a war going on in one of your systems …” He took a breath. “You have a natural disaster in another … Your Fleet is stretched thin. You need more men.”
It was James’s turn to frown. “The Galactic Senate believes that between Fleet and each system’s local guard forces, we have enough ships and manpower.” Not that James believed it.
“You’ve already been outmaneuvered and overpowered,” Darmadi snapped.
James played the part of good intel officer. “The volcanic eruption in Shinar is a one-time event and is being managed. The Dark is contained in System 5.”
“Lizzar shit it’s contained,” Darmadi replied. “You don’t believe that.”
James’s expression didn’t change. He prepared to lie—
“No, you don’t believe it,” Darmadi said decisively.
He’d perceived the truth in milliseconds. It was fascinating how humans could do that so well—at least when truth was what they were looking for and not just comforting lies.
“There isn’t much I can do about it except advise them that they’re wrong.” James continued walking, and Darmadi fell into step.
Modulating his pace to not strain the human’s lungs, James added, “Many of them remember Time Gate 8’s attack on Luddeccea. They were told that machines would rebel, and humans would be annihilated. That didn’t come to pass. Now some people are claiming the human race will be annihilated again. You can understand the general skepticism.”
“That was over one hundred years ago. People don’t learn history that well,” Darmadi protested.
“People remember their personal histories quite well.”
A muscle in Darmadi’s jaw jumped. “That’s right. You live forever here.” They walked a few more paces, and the human whispered, “And so it will be Luddecceans who will be doing the bulk of the fighting and dying.”
Static jumped under James’s skin. “Says the man who is only alive because of Galactican technology.”
That earned him a glare. They arrived at an intersection where a life-size holo switched abruptly from an advertisement for attractions in La Paz to news from Shinar. In the holo’s light, a peaceful scene from the sea near Shinar’s eruption played. An announcer outside the camera’s view intoned, “According to Fleet, the evacuation of Shinar is now under control.” It was. Noa was in charge of it. “However, Fleet is being criticized for its slow response to the situation in System 5.” James’s eyebrow lifted. The response was as fast as it could possibly be.
Expression incredulous, Darmadi said, “Do they expect you to travel faster-than-light when you’re not that technologically advanced?”
There was no missing the barb. “Not that technologically advanced yet,” James snapped back, and then added, “Some people are unafraid to criticize their government.”
“But your media doesn’t see fit to air only the rational criticisms?” Darmadi retorted.
The Galactic media was obsessed with viewership, not rationality. Noa could rant about it for hours. Jaw tight, James conceded the point. “Touché.”
Darmadi raised an eyebrow, but then the scene shifted.
Two announcers appeared to stand in front of Darmadi and James, a man and woman. Sporting identical gray bangs, their faces were augmented to appear slightly older than the twenty-something ideal—probably to give them an air of authority. The woman flashed a bright smile. “But we interrupt this program to bring you the latest update on the artist formerly known as Venus de Willendorf. He then became the Venus de Williams.” The woman smirked at the male announcer. “Bet you think I got that pronoun wrong, don’t you, Bob?”
“You didn’t?” the announcer, who must be Bob, said in a tone of faux surprise.
“I did not make a mistake! He is now Michelangelo’s David!—”
A human with all relevant male anatomy appeared between the announcers. His skin was augmented to appear marble white. His features were sculpted to look like the original David by Michelangelo—even to the extent that the hands were unnaturally large. The only thing different was this David wore a fig leaf and was probably not five meters tall.
“As you know, he always declared his love for the artist known as the Le Génie du Mal.” A human sculpted to look like the statue Le Génie du Mal—a Lucifer with a brooding expression, batwings, and Grecian robes—appeared next to “David.” “But Le Génie du Mal has never expressed interest in any of His, formerly Her, incarnations. Will this finally do the trick?”
“He’s certainly got my attention!” Bob declared.
The female anchor’s smile gleamed. “And the attention of every plastic surgeon in the nearest seven systems! Venusites—or shall we call them Davidites? —are queuing up for surgeries to look just like their idol!”
“And it’s no wonder,” Bob declared. “It’s no wonder.”
A warning light went off in the periphery of James’s vision. Darmadi’s blood pressure and heart rate had spiked. “I am fighting for this?”
James grabbed him and steered him toward the train station. People were starting to notice him—or Darmadi—at any rate. James saw a few hands go to temples and eyes grow glazed. They were filming the captain.
Darmadi protested breathlessly, “How can … people with … genuine gender dysphoria … not protest? How is this not a mockery of their pain?”
That was not the direction James would ever had anticipated Darmadi’s protests to go. He’d expected talk of heresy and godlessness.
“I know that poverty exists in the Republic,” Darmadi continued, breathing too quickly. “That people with the need for plastic surg
ery can’t … get it.”
“As though Luddeccea does better?” James demanded.
“What we have isn’t … wasted … on frivolity … on publicity stunts,” Darmadi countered. “And we do have charities … for the … poor.”
“Conditions in the Republic vary widely,” James said, knowing his tone sounded remote and clinical. “In some systems, all medical care is free.”
He wasn’t sure if Darmadi heard him. Waving a hand, the captain panted. “Luddecceans will be dying for that … stunt.”
Static flared along James’s spine. It took six seconds before he was able to speak. “Not just Luddecceans will die.” Noa could die.
“You won’t die.”
“My wife could,” James hissed. And then where would he be? What would he be? His devotion to Noa was a choice, code he had written—where would he be if he lost that choice? It wasn’t something he wanted to think about. It was something Noa insisted he should. But changing the code violated the code. He had an if-then loop he knew he could circumvent if he focused on it. But he didn’t want to.
For sixteen blessed seconds Darmadi said nothing, but then he whispered, “And you accept that?”
James’s nostrils flared. “She always says there are worse things to die for than the luxury our citizens have to not worry about anything more than their favorite holostar’s most recent antics.”
Darmadi snorted. “Such as?”
Drawing to a halt, James retorted, “Such as dying to rid your system of AI and cyborgs that pose no threat.”
“Not all AI are like you, friend. I’ve had the opportunity to meet them.”
There were reports of AI visiting the Luddeccean System and causing harm. Reports from the man beside him. Darmadi claimed AI had murdered Luddeccean civilians. They were unsubstantiated. 6T9 didn’t think it was impossible, and Darmadi didn’t seem in the habit of exaggeration, but there was no proof, and regardless … James began leading him down a wide ramp paved with an Incan inspired motif that glittered with holo-gold insets. “The Republic has passed laws recently that will dissuade any AI from committing those atrocities. AI that commit crimes in Luddeccean Space will be tried as though they’d harmed a Galactican.”