by C. Gockel
Darmadi said, “I’ve never seen that from the outside.”
“They appear to be in trance states.”
“Ah.” Hands still clasped, Darmadi looked down at the tablecloth.
“Can you contact them?” James asked.
Darmadi’s head jerked up. “What?”
The captain looked surprised, and that surprised James. “You’ve contacted Volka before using her ship as a sort of signal enhancer. Can you contact Volka through the ship now?”
For 1.3 seconds, the captain’s face was expressionless. And then Darmadi’s chin dipped. “If you are fishing to see if you can use Volka as leverage to encourage my defection, it will not work. I am going back to my family on Luddeccea.”
For a moment, the non sequitur sent James offline, and then more static frizzled under James’s skin. “I was not fishing.” James’s Q-comm flashed white, and he said, “Intel is interested in using Volka as leverage, and I am supposed to probe, subtly of course. But that was not my intention just now.”
Darmadi sat up straighter. In the ensuing second of silence, James automatically searched for an ethernet signal to hack, though Darmadi didn’t have one. He was a Luddeccean and keeping counsel only with himself.
Massaging his knuckles, the captain said, “You are terrible at this.”
There seemed to be no use lying. “I am usually assigned to tasks that involve machines. I’m very good with machines. I did inform my superiors that I was a horrible choice for this assignment.”
Darmadi’s lips formed a thin line. “Well, the honesty is refreshing.”
James’s shoulders sagged without his volition. Obviously, a bug had slipped into his programming.
Unfortunately, Darmadi caught the motion. “What?”
James stared at him, not sure if he should say the reason his circuits were darkening.
Darmadi took a sip of tea, and the casualness of the gesture annoyed James. Let Darmadi be uncomfortable, too. “In their analysis, they believed our personalities would be a good fit.”
Darmadi scowled.
“I don’t like it either,” James said, skin prickling. Then added, to be polite, “No offense.” Though he didn’t care if the human was offended.
“No offense taken,” Darmadi said, scowl deepening.
James found his head cocking. The captain didn’t seem to be lying. His heart rate and blood pressure were normal; he wasn’t overdoing eye contact.
“But it is damnably infuriating to be so—” Darmadi waved a hand, as though he were cutting something in the air.
“Predictable?” James suggested.
“Exactly,” the captain said. He smiled, huffed a soft laugh, and took a sip of tea.
James smiled, too. He’d made his human charge laugh, and laughter released dopamine, serotonin, and an array of endorphins. It showed goodwill and removed hierarchies. It improved marriage outcomes, too, as he had discovered in over one hundred years with a human. James enjoyed “humor,” for its own sake. Turns of phrase and outcomes that weren’t expected made his circuits fire and misfire pleasantly. He was convinced the ability to appreciate humor was one of humankind’s most powerful evolutionary adaptations. He also thought it was what separated successful AI from those that malfunctioned and either self-destructed or had to be destroyed. If you couldn’t enjoy that the universe was irrational and full of the unexpected, you were in serious trouble.
Going out on a limb, James narrowed his eyes with annoyance that wasn’t entirely feigned. “My wife has asked if she should feel threatened.”
Darmadi stared at him for .1 milliseconds, and James wondered if he had miscalculated.
And then Darmadi choked on the tea, and James knew he had.
“Sorry,” James said.
Laughing and wiping his eyes, Darmadi shook his head. “No need, no need.” Darmadi was smiling, but that had to have hurt in his condition.
Confirming that supposition, Darmadi winced. “If not that, what?”
A light went off in the periphery of James’s vision. The scaffolding holding the captain together had been strained. With a thought, he initiated repairs.
“Mr. Sinclair?” Darmadi asked, cocking his head, expression serious again.
“I’m sorry,” James said. “I don’t understand your question.”
“What was your intention asking me to contact Volka?”
James surveyed the data coming from Tab and Time Gate 1. “When they were in a trance-like state, the crew had stopped communicating over the ether. That’s normal with telepathy, but it also happens when the Dark infects cyborgs. I was concerned, but they’re free-gating now. Everything appears to be normal.”
James brought his focus back to the present.
Darmadi had his elbows on the table again. Clasping his hands in front of his face, he glared at James, heart rate and blood pressure soaring.
“What?” James asked.
“Now I’m concerned.” Looking heavenward, Darmadi ground out, “Don’t let me look like an idiot,” and then bowed his head.
They were light, and then they weren’t. Volka exhaled. Sundancer’s hull became transparent, and outside a dark gray expanse of moon appeared, and two twin stars blazed. “What?” someone said, and they were light again. They re-emerged near a planet that was a drab mustard yellow, twisted past a moon shaped like an ill-formed donut that hadn’t quite had its center punched out, and then once again they were light. They solidified and dove between the rings of a planet that was purple and orange … and were light again. The next thing Volka knew, Sundancer was emerging near a planet that was a blue green jewel. “It’s Earth!” someone shouted, and Carl squeaked. “She couldn’t come straight here; she had to throw off her friends.”
Volka looked upward and smiled. “Thank you, Sundancer.” Before she finished, she was abruptly caught up in a hug. The person hugging her pulled back, and Volka was staring up at Rhinehart who was saying, “You are so damned adorable; I could eat you up,” only her lips weren’t moving. “You did it!” she said instead. Volka smiled weakly. “Thank you?”
And then Jerome was smacking her on one shoulder and Young was smacking her on the other. Dr. Patrick was smiling, but thinking, “I can’t believe she did it.” He was relieved and also jealous, and it made Volka’s mind spin.
Then someone started describing loudly, and in great detail, a scene with Volka and Rhinehart naked and … Volka spun away from Jerome and Young, caught sight of the speaker, and almost shouted, “Stop, just stop!” but Carl squeaked, “Volka! It’s your telepathy.”
Volka gasped in understanding. She was hearing everyone in her mind. Stratos was the one envisioning the romantic escapade between her and Rhinehart—but he was doing so silently.
More thoughts flooded her. Ramirez wasn’t thinking about his little boy; he was thinking about his wife and … she blinked away, trying to keep the personal images out of her head. Dr. Patrick was still jealous. Jerome was talking to command. Other Marines were mentally composing their debriefings. No fewer than six of them were worried about being forced to take an honorable discharge on medical grounds for hallucinating. Dr. Elam, the new medical doctor, was scanning through ether data, trying to decide if they had suffered a mass hallucination. Someone was worried that his dad might have passed on while they were away. Volka’s stomach clenched, her mind spinning with all the different thoughts, images, and emotions.
Was she so tired, was she so stressed that she couldn’t turn the telepathy off? She looked down at the werfle, who was standing on a crate.
Carl’s ears sagged. “You’ve changed. Your telepathy is too strong, Hatchling.”
“Help me,” she whispered through the waves.
Mustering himself to his full height, Carl thumped a little paw on his chest and declared aloud, “I always knew your primitive, less-evolved human minds would come in useful!”
The myriad of thoughts and feelings stopped and were replaced by a shared feeling of incredulity. Vol
ka sighed in relief, the current of everyone’s thoughts thankfully taking her in one direction.
“Well, bless your little megalomaniac hearts,” Rhinehart declared.
Carl bowed. “Madam, I assure you, there is no mania involved.” He waved an extravagant paw. “The One are not so foolish as to empathize with prey animals or less evolved species.”
There were snorts. Volka smiled, happy to ride along on the group’s singular focus.
“But we are less evolved, and you empathize with us, don’t you?” Rhinehart countered.
“We don’t empathize with you as a species,” Carl explained. “But we make exceptions for the exceptional among you. Few and far between as those humans may be.”
There were more snorts.
Going over to the werfle’s perch, Rhinehart said in a baby voice, “Would my mighty overlord like some scritches?”
“Rat livers, yes!” Carl declared, flopping over onto his back and presenting his tummy.
Rhinehart delivered the scratches as promised. There was a moment of laughter, and then the consciousness of those aboard began flying in a multitude of different directions.
Young saved her. In his booming voice, he asked, “Carl, why did we go over the edge of the universe?”
All attention snapped to the lieutenant and the werfle.
Rolling over, Carl butted Rhinehart’s hand with his head, pointed at Volka, and declared, “It’s all her fault.”
“Me?” squeaked Volka. Echoes of disbelief and shock shimmered in the air around her—whether they’d been spoken aloud or silently, she wasn’t sure.
“Yep,” said Carl. “Volka understood that Sundancer wouldn’t just drop Bracelet’s Q-comm off in a singularity beam and just leave it. She let Bracelet know we’d be by to pick it up.” Hopping down off the crates, Carl slunk toward the door of the compartment. “Sundancer misunderstood Volka and followed Bracelet’s Q-comm particle outside the universe and retrieved it.”
“Retrieved it?” Everyone thought or said at once.
“Yep,” said Carl, weaving between the Marines’ boots. “Follow me.”
He trotted to the bridge, everyone on his heels. Carl hopped the final few meters to a point just past where the floor normally opened, rose to his hind paws, and pointed at the floor. “Right there.”
Volka peered over Carl’s head at a point on the floor that looked like any other, and then the point in the floor flashed, just the way Volka had imagined the particle to look when she’d imagined it for Sundancer. Of course, without the chip that read the particle’s spin, it wasn’t helpful to Bracelet.
“Can it be put it in a new chip?” Volka asked.
Dr. Patrick scratched the back of his neck. “With the amount of money those little particles are worth, you better believe Fleet is going to try.”
Volka exhaled. That sounded promising. The ship must have caught her hope, because the interior brightened. There was some chatter about the chip, mental and audible, and then the subjects of the crew skittered off on different trajectories again. Volka found herself hearing seventeen different conversations at once, not sure which were aloud and which were silent. She turned in place, dazed.
And then she heard another familiar voice rise among the others. “Volka? Little Ship?”
She blinked, trying to isolate Alaric’s voice.
“Are you all right?” There was so much urgency there … she could feel the pull of the words; the direction they came from. Volka closed her eyes and focused.
When she opened her eyes, she was sitting at a table on a train. Mountains, impossibly narrow and tall, covered in green, rolled by on either side. Sitting across from her was Admiral Noa Sato’s husband, James. He wasn’t looking at her, though; his blue eyes were on the person sitting next to Volka.
“Volka?” Alaric asked.
Volka started.
Sitting much too close, his body turned toward hers, was Alaric. “You’re all right?”
“Yes, I—”
A waitress set plates of food in front of James and Alaric. She looked at Alaric with worried eyes, and Volka saw what the waitress saw: Alaric bent over clasped hands, as though he were praying.
James waved dismissively. “Luddeccean custom before eating, don’t worry.”
The waitress left, worrying about Alaric suffering from altitude sickness.
“Volka?” Alaric said, and she saw him as he was again, turned toward her. Or maybe that wasn’t how he was. Maybe the scene in the real world was as the waitress had seen it?
More urgently, Alaric said, “My friend, Mr. Sinclair, said you and your crew may have been in some sort of confrontation.”
Volka gaped, catching on the feeling behind the words. Alaric had meant that first part, “my friend.” It wasn’t hyperbole. He liked James and was enjoying his company. Volka cast a glance at the stoic android and felt a stab of jealousy that caught her off guard.
“Volka?” Alaric pressed again. “Are you all right? James thought you might have been infected.” He didn’t shiver … it was more as though the air between them shivered.
“No,” Volka said hurriedly, “no chance of that.”
The universe between them rippled. Volka heard his unasked question and answered, “There was a confrontation, between us and more of Sundancer’s species.” Her eyes caught on another man sitting two tables away, and she heard his thoughts. “Only an hour more to our stop, and then on to Machu Picchu.” Her heart thudded fast and hard: the waitress, the stranger across the car. She wasn’t just reading Alaric’s mind; she was reading the minds of everyone around her. This hadn’t happened when she’d met Alaric in the illusion of Silas’s garden.
“They were hostile?” Alaric asked.
Volka’s attention snapped back to him. He was surprised, concerned, though not for her … for the galaxy. They couldn’t afford a war on two fronts.
“They won’t attack us here,” Volka replied. Her eyes were on his, but she felt the presence of every human on Earth and in near atmosphere. “With the will of a billion humans I would rip them to shreds.” Humans and weere, Luddeccea, Earth, and all the fragile worlds where life survived would not be destroyed by the elder ships’ disdain.
Alaric blinked.
Volka blinked too, surprised at the vehemence behind her words. “You’re right,” she said. “We can’t afford a war on two fronts, but they won’t come to confront us.” She knew that … she’d succeeded in prickling their conscience. They had allowed the deaths of billions of The People. She huffed and looked away. “If only the Dark felt such guilt.”
She felt his dubiousness but had no desire to explain. Her eyes went to James. “You and James are going to Machu Picchu.”
At her words, she heard Alaric’s thoughts. He wanted to go there because his wife’s Earth ancestors were Chinese Peruvian. Once, when Alaric had gotten Alexis tipsy, she had confessed to wanting to visit the ancient monument. Alaric wanted to visit, to get her something to show he’d been thinking of her. The people of the Republic with their shallow affairs made him miss her. Volka knew all this without being told. But what he said aloud—or deliberately thought—was something to keep the moment light. “You’re on a first name basis with Mr. Sinclair and I’m not? I’m going to tell him I’m hurt.”
Movement in the corner of her eye made her glance to the front door of the car. Two girls were peering through a window, pointing at Alaric. Volka frowned. “You have fans,” she said as one of them said to the other over the ether, “The captain is even more handsome than he is in the fan holos. Maybe he will sign my boob!”
“What?” said Alaric, oblivious.
Volka sighed. “The girls … Something has happened. I hear everyone’s thoughts now.”
Knowing she was hearing everything he thought made Alaric immediately think of Alexis. When Volka met his eyes, there was no apology, just the same annoyance he’d experienced before, the irritation at being telepathically invaded. She could apologize but
didn’t.
But then Alaric said something she did not expect. “Be careful, Volka. The Republic is isolating The One. They might be … unfriendly … to you.” There was real concern behind his words, and she nodded. Shissh had told her the Republic was worried about The One and took elaborate steps to avoid giving away state secrets. Volka worked for the Republic, but they weren’t always ethical—they’d tried to force Volka into being Ran’s mistress. She did have to be careful—Sixty had warned her too, hadn’t he? She took a breath … Sixty … his benediction of her actions on the pirate planet, that was what had allowed her to break through the elder ships’ spell.
Alaric leaned closer. “To the other people on the train, do I appear to be talking to myself?”
“You appear to be deep in prayer,” Volka replied, seeing him through the eyes of the train’s other human occupants. Her gaze slid to James. He was the only person she couldn’t read and looking at him was like seeing an oasis in a desert.
With a twisted smile, Alaric said, “My hometown priest always said prayer would save me someday. I never believed him.” His expression grew serious. “I’ll swear on my grave that it is only the Little Ship that is the telepathic one. Mr. Sinclair seems to believe that.”
Volka softened at the kindness.
“I’m going to do it!” said one of the girls outside the dining car. Said. Or thought.
“Look out, you’re about to have company,” Volka told Alaric.
He glanced in the girls’ direction and said dryly, “Don’t worry, they’ll have to get past my boyfriend.” He felt only amusement, and Volka knew why she was jealous of James. He could be friends with Alaric. Alaric could be comfortable with him in a way that he could never be comfortable with Volka. With James, there was no emotional entanglement, no sexual chemistry, and no irritating telepathy. James, whether he knew it or not, whether Alaric acknowledged it or not, was part of Alaric’s tribe. Volka couldn’t be.
She glanced at a man sitting at another booth and heard him give a stock tip over the ether. She glanced at a woman and heard her ether conversation with her lover while her husband sat in front of her. A kindly older man was thinking about a shipment of illegal narcotics he’d fenced to take this trip. If humans knew what she could do, what she couldn’t help doing … Her breath caught. She had thought of herself as part of the human tribe when she’d fought the elder ships. But she didn’t belong to any tribe.